Dragon’s Dogma Is The Worst Game I Have Ever Played

I’m just going to go ahead and say it. Dragon’s Dogma is the worst game I have ever played.

Even my most hated of games like BioShock, Prototype, Red Dead Redemption and Might and Magic: Dark Messiah at least have some semblance of charm and character. But Dragon’s Dogma is just empty. And yes I know that those are some very popular games I just branded, so I guess that makes my opinion automatically wrong, right?

Anyway, allow me to recount my 6 hour trudge through Dragon’s Dogma. Don’t think of this as a review, more like a gaming journal…written in blood.

The Pain Begins

The game starts surprisingly abruptly as I play as some random man walking around in some ruins to apparently fight a dragon, for some reason. I see a dragon, it talks (which was pretty cool actually) and then we fight some goblins and a Chimera. So far I’m not as hooked as I expected, but that dragon is pretty cool I guess. I’m getting sick of games that just have dragons being the size of big cars.

The Chimera battle was more of a sign that this game was bad than I first thought. After six hours I’m kicking myself for not just quitting then and there.

Combat in Dragon’s Dogma is monotonous and messy. It didn’t start off so bad since I was using a sword, shield and there weren’t many enemies, but the Chimera takes a huge amount of damage and I was never really sure if I was even hurting it at all.

The goat head is pretty useless…

I resorted to climbing on its back like an overly friendly toddler and moving my body around. It kinda looked like I was stabbing the beast, but because many of the melee animations look like pieces of paper crunching up against each other, I couldn’t really tell. My allies also die very quickly, which is easily fixed by me just going over to them and pressing B, so the whole battle made me feel uncomfortably invincible.

many of the melee animations look like pieces of paper crunching up against each other

It also didn’t help that my allies were shouting “The lion is weak to magic”, despite the fact that I didn’t have anything magical on me to use.

So, some unexplained door opens and the game cuts jarringly to a character creation screen. Wait, that wasn’t my character? What the hell was the point of all of that?! Is it supposed to be a flash forward? If so, my four foot tall hobbit character really grew up.

Yes, I chose a short man as my character. I was trying to make my journey as mystical and charming as possible, so I went for a somewhat ‘Child Mage’ look. I didn’t expect it to make that much of an emotional impact, but when he was shown waving to a woman, who looks like his older sister since I look 13, I was glad that I chose this adorable character. Things are starting to look up.

I thought it would drastically change the impression many characters were giving off, since they were going to speak to a child like an adult, which may alter the themes and messages Dragon’s Dogma is trying to show. Fortunately, it kinda did, but that’s just me tricking the game into being better. That’s not a compliment to it, rather me creating fun out of a bad experience.

Dragon On The Beach

I then see a relatively awesome cinematic where a dragon plops out of a black hole thing in the sky and attacks my village…because I guess that’s what dragons do. Suddenly my character, after grabbing a sword on the ground, starts charging for the dragon.

Am I supposed to find this behavior brave or endearing? I don’t know a single thing about my character, so it just comes off as weird and genuinely stupid. What is he fighting for exactly? If the woman he waved to earlier was in danger I may understand him doing anything he could to try and save her, but he just runs at the dragon with absolutely no plan. What is he expecting to happen? Is the dragon just going to see one person running for it and fly away with it’s tail between its legs?

NO! He broke a nail!

The dragon steps around aimlessly while I hack at its feet, until it smacks me away and starts speaking in some unintelligible language. Oh god, it’s going to be one of those “The Chosen One” stories isn’t it?

It then pulls out my heart and eats it…I can’t wait for that to be explained…

A Heartless Character…Literally

I wake up in my room, alive somehow, and the dragon has vanished…after doing nothing to this village except kill several people and scare the rest. Worst. Dragon. Ever. But now its voice is in my head, telling me to find him and get back his heart.

Okay, why do I care? I’m alive. Why would I risk my life to get my heart back when I’m perfectly fine without it? And what was the dragon even trying to do? It shows up, kills several people, eats my heart and then disappears. Is that it?

Anyway, the totally hollow and contrived quest begins!

Now I’m told to run around my village and talk to people, and that kind of objective is constant throughout my entire experience.

My character sprints at 70 Miles an hour, which never ceases to look ludicrous

You don’t know something, so you’re forced to blindly sprint around boring towns and talk to people who may give you some vague clue as to what to do.

My character sprints at 70 Miles an hour, which never ceases to look ludicrous, and I make my way to a gate and some guy tells me about Pawns.

Pawns are people who plop out of the sky and fight battles with you. That’s it. That’s not even watered down, that is literally all they are.

At first I thought they were going to have some kind of slavery theme flowing through the story, since Pawns apparently aren’t even human and essentially act as your ‘combat slaves’, but they’re just ‘people’ who fight with you. Nothing else.

Live long and prosper…and get killed by a wolf

This destroyed my Fable-esque decision of making my character a child, because I’m given people who will follow me everywhere, which makes the whole game one big escort mission, as well as making your journey feel depressingly impersonal.

A Pawn called Rook joins me and we venture out to some camp that I’m told is collecting people to fight dragons.

On a side note, to exit my village I had to walk up and push B on a closed gate. A CLOSED gate. That is so unintuitive. Why would I assume a closed gate would lead me out? A door I can understand since it can be opened and closed easily by one person. But this is a portcullis. Anyway, moving on.

Camp 1

Now we come to the combat.

I chose Mage as my class, however you can change it later so the classes become completely arbitrary, as well as stunting what could have been an innovative level up system, if there was one.

My attacks consist of swinging my staff, which is too slow and weak to ever be worth using, and shooting out several magical blue balls that shatter like tiny ice cubes on enemies. Rook can enchant my magical ice cubes with fire, which appears to do more damage, but since every enemy takes such a gratuitous amount of damage it just looks ridiculous seeing a goblin take dozens of fireballs and just keep coming. This is not engaging. You can’t just slap more health onto an enemy and make them more difficult, you have to advance their AI.

The lack of attacks wouldn’t be so bad except for the long time every enemy takes to kill. Even at level 13 it took me 30+ fireball attacks and my entire ensemble of warriors to take ONE bandit down, yet I can kill a wolf in about four seconds on my own. Apparently bandits are made out of diamonds and titanium, and wolfs are made out of tissues.

I make it to the encampment and I suddenly realize that everyone is calling me Arisen, because of what happened in my village with me and the dragon.

And here is one of the worst things about Dragon’s Dogma. There is nothing going on with my character. He doesn’t talk and is completely blank, yet everyone is praising me for something that, by the game’s own admission, I know virtually nothing about.
yet everyone is praising me for something that, by the game’s own admission, I know virtually nothing about

I don’t feel like an actual leader, just some random pseudo-hero who’s walking to some place because it has some vague connection to whatever my equally vague objective is. And the Pawns make this even more prominent because they diminish my involvement in combat by shoving more bodies into the fray.

At the encampment I stumble upon a glowing stone that allows me to make my own Pawn. An interesting idea, which I take full advantage of. Echoing my decision to make my own character a child, I make a young girl, and even named her after my girlfriend. But nothing happens with her. She’s just as meaningless as Rook and me, so what was the point of that? This game sure loves introducing ideas and situations only for them to have no consequence to anything.

After some meandering objectives like carrying stuff, hitting scarecrows and killing a Cyclops as a test of bravery (even though I did about 2% of the work) we all make our way to another camp. Here is where things start to get infuriating.

Since enemies take such an obscene amount of punishment, and I have such a pitiful attack, a single battle can wipe me out in seconds. The game seems to think I’m ready, so why are my attacks so weak?

Everything has the ability to kill me with one hit, so I keep my distance and shoot some magical balls over and over and over and over and over and over and over until one of my Pawns finishes an enemy off. It took me about six attempts to get down the path and to the next camp, especially since one wolf can blind sight me and bite all my health off in one go.

This isn’t engaging or even challenging. It’s just monotonous because I have such a limited an seemingly useless way of attacking anything and have to stand 20 feet away from the action. The Pawns aren’t much help either since each of them dies a few seconds after they get revived.

Also, my Pawns find it necessary to comment on every single thing that’s happening wherever we are and whatever we’re doing. This is slightly tolerable when they tell you about waterfalls and rivers, but during combat they keep saying things like “They’re weak against fire”, “Look out, Goblins!”, “They don’t falter with their assaults” and every variation of those, among many others.

When I eventually got three Pawns they’re voices looped over each other’s and even their own, so combat quickly becomes flooded with my allies useless battle cries.

I know what’s going on! I’m in the fight! Just because somone is shouting how difficult a fight is doesn’t make it more exciting. It just makes it more obviously ridiculous how a person can take 10 fireballs to the face and not even react.

The voice acting is also terrible, so everything they said annoyed me.

Camp 2

I make it to the second camp, some more generic fantasy dialogue occurs and then a Hydra attacks. Now, I’m excited.

I needed something epic and fun to wash away the tedious taste in my mouth from before. But no, fighting the Hydra is just as weirdly boring as everything else.

Firstly, isn’t a Hydra supposed to have some kind of water theme, not just be a bunch of snakes on one body? Secondly, I’m getting really sick of games having their large enemies attack in stupid and lazy ways. Over half of the time, the Hydra does NOTHING except sway its heads around and roars. Other than that, it slithers through the camp and sometimes bites me or someone else. What is it trying to do? Why is it here? Is it hungry? Because I stood right in front of it and it didn’t do anything to me, ever.

Shedding their skin must be annoying

So, I start spitting my little magical balls at it…which does nothing, then someone tosses me an explosive barrel, which I throw in the air, causing one of the Hydra’s heads to swallow it. Um, why? Why would it do that?!

I keep ineffectively shooting it, and then one of its heads bursts off like a champagne cork. I guess that barrel it swallowed was totally pointless…okay. Then the Hydra randomly disappears just like the dragon. Did it just leave because we took one of its heads off? It’s a Hydra! As a fantasy nerd myself I actually find that rather offensive. They may as well have just had the Chimera from before just be a big lion and nothing else.

Just Let Me Carry It!

Now I’m escorting a carriage that’s taking the Hydra head to a city…what an adventure. This objective was horrendous.

The carriage moves incredibly slowly, so I was able to fight my way through every enemy it would have encountered along the path before it even got halfway there. I can make the carriage move temporarily faster by kicking the animal carrying it, and somehow my foot does more damage to a big Ox than 20 fireballs do to a person…wow….just wow.

Remember reader, the combat is long and frustrating, especially since if you die you get sent all the way back to a previous save which results in a lot of backtracking and wasted time.

At this point the combat is trying to be intuitive by having your allies heal you and enchant your weapons, but these moments are blessings within a constantly tedious situation. You don’t even do that much damage with enchantments and I die in 1-2 hits from anything, so when my Pawns help me it’s just a brief moment where the game becomes slightly less horrible and is on its way to becoming tolerable.

The enemies aren’t difficult, they just take a long time to finish off, so they usually end up killing me through my own boredom or by bothering to attack me at all. The only times I ever died were due to me reviving my fallen Pawns. This either resulted in an enemy rushing up to me and killing me in one hit, or my Pawns dying seconds after being revived…resulting in me reviving them…and then dying in one hit. Rinse, lather, repeat.

This isn’t good game design. You have to give the player the ability to gauge how strong an enemy is, either through engaging combat or even by their appearance. I’m not going to assume that a human can take 30 times as much damage as a wolf. How does that even make any sense?!
they usually end up killing me through my own boredom or by bothering to attack me

Anyway, after what feels like 2 hours, the carriage finally makes it to the destination.

And now, I have nothing to do. I have no quests or objectives of any kind. So, what, I’m supposed to just stand still and do nothing? Where’s my incentive?

I start running around a dull, lifeless, brown city for ages until I found some guy who told me to do some searching in the underground part of the city, because weird things are happening down there apparently.

I now have three pawns who never shut the hell up, and here is where battles starts to get pillow punchingly annoying.

Half of my team, including me, use magic, while another uses a healing spell. All of these obnoxious displays fill up the screen with nonsensically large magical circles and explosions. Combat becomes so vibrant and clustered that half the time I only knew there was an enemy nearby because my character automatically locks onto them through the shroud of green and red lasers.

We make it to the bottom of this featureless tomb and look at a light on the ground. Suddenly, red worms start coming up from the ground and I run up, leaving this place. Okay, that achieved a lot. Run down, look at a light, run back up…Again, what an adventure.

Although, granted, I did like the idea of these monstrous red worm things continuously bursting through the ground, forcing me to run away, leaving my Pawns behind to die it seems. It was also one of the only moments where what a Pawn says is actually useful. As the red worms are attacking, my Pawns shout things like “We cannot win this fight. Run!”, so I ran. It was a rather magical and creepy moment, but that’s it.

Explore? Why should I?

Because I did this random and completely unconnected objective I can now talk to a guy about dragons. He tells me to go investigate some cult called Salvation.

I venture out and walk in the direction of the objective on my map. Because the map is so small and scarcely detailed I constantly end up on pathways that curve away from the marker, forcing me to backtrack to find another opening I could travel down. And because my Pawns keep reminding me that the way I’m going is overly dangerous, it’s like the game is pushing me around just to make me hit another dead end.

By the way, the map below isn’t completed like this when you play the game. My objective marker was placed on the left of this entire map, which was totally unexplored for me. I had to keep pushing towards the marker from my every location just so I could find some gap that may lead me to the pathway I had to get on, which resulted in me reaching a dead end and/or getting ambushed and killed. And still my Pawns never shut up.

So, I end up in some waterfall cave thing, but I just give up on this and make my way back to the guy who gave me the objective. I then ask for another one, which is finding some kind of goblin stronghold.

Is this really all the game is? This doesn’t seem like the Main Story, even though there hasn’t really been that much of a Main Story in the last three hours. I thought I was looking for a dragon. It made sense at the start, since I was locating a group that were also looking for dragons. But now, cults? Strongholds? Where has the story gone?

Off I go again…

I come across some more bandits who kill me about 12 times before I just run past them (you have no idea how infuriating that is), and now I just start looking around to try and find some path that may possibly lead me in the direction of my totally inconsequential objective.

I’m totally sapped of enthusiasm at this point. I’m walking up a ledge and a bandit shoots ONE arrow at me, and I die. One arrow. Before the game even recognizes that I’m dead, I turn the console off, sit down at my computer and begin writing all of this.

Ehhhhhhh……

I literally feel stupider after all of that.

The story is basically non-existent

Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced

Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight

There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour

The map is close to useless

Traveling anywhere takes forever

The Pawns may as well be robots

I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health

The graphics are surprisingly bad

The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read

The voice acting is generic and annoying

Villages and towns look lifeless

Enemies are monumentally durable

Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any

It is such a vacuous experience. I always try to finish a game before talking about it, but this just crushed me. So all I can do now is complain…

And if you want me to go into more detail as to why I class this as the worst game I have played, then be sure to check back on bagofgames.com where I will definitely plonk this on the Top Worst list of the year.

this guy is a retard you just suck at it and by the way when start out as a mage you can hold the left or right trigger to view other attacks you idiot and tell me what game do you like if you say skyrim i will shoot you

If you are insinuating that Skyrim is bad, you don’t deserve your video games either.
Skyrim compared to Dragons Dogma? There is no comparison. Skyrim is better, bigger, more detailed, better crafting, better questing, more realistic enemies, more prominent story. While I am not saying Dragons Dogma is bad, I am saying it isn’t even in the same spectrum as Skyrim. Dragons Dogma was a pretty decent game for anyone experienced enough with RPGs, and it does REQUIRE prior experience with RPGs to get the full experience of Dragons Dogma. BTW, adding a ‘s has only 3 real meanings in English : Is, Has and Us. So the title alone has a misspelling. This game needed far more work by real game/period experts before it was released. Sadly, a few small patches will never fix the mistakes this game made. And I agree with him about the map. Short of ignoring every quest and exploring every corner of the world, the map is useless for questing. Especially since they have a Duchy, meaning cartographers would have long since existed and would be selling maps, probably for 10 gold.

I have to add that the slow motion cutscenes that focus on pawns are plain retarded.
I’ve died 3 times to harpys grabbing me and whisking me too high up to have any chance because of these cutscenes and they really break immersion and gameplay. Seriously, why should my pawns grabbing an enemy be more important than my own characters survival?
And Blue Moon Tower? That’s fu**ing retarded, it’s a citadel, not a tower.
The Developers should be drawn and quartered for their foolishness and replaced with developers from the Far Cry and Elder Scrolls games. And why the hell do all these new games deny spears? Entire armies would wait as the best hoplites from both would fight in single combat to the death. There is no reason not to include spears in these games, especially when most have enemies carrying spears anyway.

Skyrim has one of the best storylines ever and a deep and rich mythology. The environment is huge and insanely detailed the story is complex and entwined in with much Norse mythology. That’s where it stops being a great game and sucks. Even if I put aside the huge number of horrendous glitches many of which were never fixed or made worse or cause by the “patches” and Bethesda left those problems up to the modders to fix. The main failing of Skyrim is the protagonist’s interaction with the environment. He?She moves around like a video game character from the late 90’s movements are robotic the combats is just silly looking. NO differences between the way people look for the most part sure you have some different facial traits but the not one fat in keeper or bent over elderly person who shuffles about. The differences are just skin deep literally. There is literally no difference between the races save for a few bonuses that don’t really make a difference once you get you level up high enough. They should have different abilities you can see and experience like elves being agile and acrobatic; orcs that move brutishly and can crush foes with particular style of combat. The cat people should also be agile and acrobatic, the lizard people should be able to swim way better and fight in water, also possibly climb sheer surfaces. All you do is hit something doesn’t matter where over and over again with either a spell or a weapon. You can climb up terrain or grapple foes… you can’t climb up larger for and find weak spots. When your character jumps it looks like some stupid Russian dance thing people just don’t move that way… you would think they would have spent some money on some motion capture acting so their characters would move naturally. And speaking of acting most of it sucks ass… yeah they spent money on some big name actors but most of them are not great voice actors so who gives a rat’s ass that Lynda Carter or Joan Allen is voice acting in this game ‘cuz they bother sucked. The main vampire chick sounds like something out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, some bratty American teenager not an ancient immortal vampire who was imprisoned for centuries.

Seriously man, go play Mass Effect and have your ego mollycoddled. Here is what I think of your succint ‘summary’:

•The story IS bad I will give you that.
•Dull? Are you freaking kidding me? It is engaging, brutal and intelligently designed. If you can’t get into this, then you might as well get the hell out of this business.
•You are pissed you have to save the game?
•Play. The. Whole. Game. Plenty of armors. Plus they have already released DLC with 12 new weapons.
•Map is fine, I am banking on (based on your already limited personal coping and apparent video game skill set) that it is user error that is the problem
•Traveling anywhere takes forever <—- Play more than six hours. Fast travel is there. It isn't free, but it is there. It is even customizable.
•The pawns learn more as the game progresses and for someone who seems to desire to have their hand-held, I figured you'd love them.
•I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health <—- JUST LAWL. Have you ever played an RPG before?
•Textures are bad and there is some clipping, the lighting is fantastic and the color palette is appropriate.
•The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read. <—– Herp, Derp read the back of the box it is a 720/1080 game. Have no issues reading the text.
•The voice acting IS very weak.
•Villages and towns do their job, they are equipment/quest hubs
•Enemies are static. If you played the game for more than SIX HOURS, you would realize that if you level past them, they become very easy to down.
•I wasn't aware that climbing around an airborn Griffin, torching its wings, and then riding it to the ground for you and your companions to hack to pieces was boring. OH THATS RIGHT YOU NEVER MADE IT THAT FAR.

You need to finish games you review. At the end of the day, this is a great game that lacks polish. It isn't perfect, but the gameplay is some of the best this genre has ever seen. Don't talk about graphics unless you can state exactly what was bad/good. Plain and simple. What I find hilarious 'Stretch' is that you publish these articles with no name attached. Are you scared of your own words? Or do you just have accountability issues? You put somethingI hope you don't get paid to review games. If I wanted to listen to a whiny, over-entitled and mentally deficient teenager whine about video games, I would go on the D3 forums. FFS.

I loved your Griffin comment haha so True its so much fun When you climb on a Griffon and hacking it to the ground makes you feel like the alpha male in game and when you knockdown or Stagger a Cursed Dragon In the air.

I gotta say I disagree the story is pretty good sure there are some plot holes, but it’s not bad. The voice acting is in my opinion really good as is the writing. I think it just become tiresome hearing the pawns say the same thing over and over again. If you want bad voice acting I mean really bad play Skyrim… not all of it is bad some most of it is atrocious. Everything else you said is dead on bro… This guy needs to either actually play a game for more than 6 hours or stop writing reviews… he also needs glasses because he’s getting near sited from too much TV.

he is not entirely wrong though, this is a fun game but it is both shity and good at the same time, pawn AI is utter shit, the game refuses to tell you what the AI names do or mean (without me having to alt tab out of the game mind you to use wiki every 5 seconds) combat is a joke a times, boss fights work well while some times a simple bandit with a shield takes zero damage even when i use massive OP spell on them.

i love this game but i also fucking hate it as well. finally a game with cool looking spells…. that takes far to long to cast and you constantly keep getting tosses around. no such thing as tanking in this game unless YOU are going tank, pawns are completely worthless aside for healing and baiting and they can barely do that right. the go, come and help commands dont work half the time. the game is just a big stupid mess but has the potential to be an amazing RPG,

dragons dogma i would rate as a 6/10 barely above average, bad pawn ai, some times broken combat, and over all bad design choices keeps this game back. and while someone commented that skyrim sucks. well atlest skyrim does more things correctly. sure its dumbed down but just because something is overly complex and time consuming does not automatically mean it is better. i keep playing this game even though i find myself yelling :fuck you stupid piece of shit game” every time it gets stupidly complex just for complexity’s sake which is not a good reason to be overly hard. and there is a fine line between hand holding and giving relevant and easy reached information this game doesnt do either infact it hides many things in the game just to fuck with you. the fan boys would go and defend that with “oh it makes you actually work for it, makes it worth while” well thats all fine and dandy but there is a reason dragons dogma is not super popular like skyrim is. infact people who i find that played dragons dogma on average would reply with “eh could of been a good game but…eh it didnt quite get there.”

oh and the lack of fast travel makes this game seem larger than it actually is. i added a dozen portal crystals in all the key locations and used them… i shit you not it cut out 75% of the games life span because it just pads out its game with back tracking.

All I see is a total fail pretending to play a game that.
You basically bitch about
– not being given the full story on a silver plate in the prologue (that also includes the “Arisen” and the pawns, they fucking do have a story and purpose)
– not being able to massacre everyone and everything by mindlessly smashing 1 button
– being given the freedom to do what you want in what order you want in a nearly-sandbox (except for main story quests)
– actually having to explore and *gasp* walk to your objective instead of getting warped there at the push of a button

All in all I doubt there is even a single game where you would be anywhere near sufficiently qualified to test and review it. You played a game for…3hrs ? and didn’t get ANYTHING.

Like Johnny said, learn up on the game. If you understand it it’ll go much better for you. The reason pawns are bland are because of the “Pawn System”. While they are only there to fight with you” how cool is it that the ones you hired are created by other people. And your pawn can be rented out and become more helpful. Its a new IP so its not going to get things perfect, however it is the BEST new IP to come around in a long time. Also, 3 mages on your team… including you… bad idea.

I was amazed at this review! Unbelievable amounts of intolerance/Hate/crybaby bullshiz, all thrown thrown into a whiny little rant about how much you suck?!
Also, 2 mages? for what? at least tell me you were mainly fire and the other frost or lightning even…I hear you on a few points, but it just sounds like you should be playing Skyrim on the novice setting bud.

Good luck with these kinds of reviews. 😐 Maybe you’ll see all these people disliking this rant and some even throwing some helpful advice to you and try again…

You had 2 mages in a 4 man team?! Of course it’s no fun like that you dumb bitch! Not only the fact that the teams should be balanced out with 4 different classes, the mage itself is just not has the most engaging combat. How about you use your ‘stretchy’ arms and reach out for your jizzful keyboard to pick another class? You didn’t even gave the game a fuckin chance

I never really liked this game so I’m not at all defending it but based on your writing it just seems that you really, really, really suck at gaming and abstract problem solving in general. You also fail to grasp many gaming concepts at their most basic level. Just stick to Candy Crush- it shouldn’t strain your tiny little brain too much.

I love you for this comment. I have beaten DD literally hundreds of times, and have never once had an issue with enemies taking too long to kill (until, of course, I went into DA territory)

I am convinced that this reviewer is either incredibly, terribly bad at video games, or they went through all the effort of starting a game, creating a character, dropping back to the main menu, starting a new game in hard mode, and whining about how they failed.

Im not even going to comment on how they are incapable of threading the quests together…

DUDE YOUR OBIVIOSLY TO CRITICAL SKYRIM DIDNT GIVE ME THE EXPERIENCE i wanted that this game gave me i love and spend more money if i had to like fallout 4 this game I RECOMEND ANY BODY WHO READS TEH COMENT THIS GUy is a hired pretty boy crittic who is payed to talk shit about a great game and scaring other people OFF FUCK you stretch for being such a lazy baby wines to the creators because “the game had I literally feel stupider after all of that.+ this is even a fucking complaint .
The story is basically non-existent. The story is existent and your just a fuckboy complaining about his food that was gave to. what you are is your picky ass critic .
Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced._____ DUDE YOU PLAYED AS A MAGE YOUR ENTIRE PLAYTHROUGH OF COURSE DAMN COMBATS GONNA BE DULL AS FUCK .____
Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight. ___ excuse me for asking have you legend of zelda ocarina it was just LIKE THIS MAN JUST LIKE IT ANd you stand here telling me that the safe spots were to far apart FUCK YOU
There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour———- THAT FUCKING WHORE SHIT There is so more than you have brain cells man and most of the post game ones were freaking badasse such as the crimson armor and the chimera armor and chimera armor
The map is close to useless
Traveling anywhere takes forever ___ DUDE srsly? How else you gona get your shit to enhance weapons? SHIT IT OUT OF YOUR ASE?
The Pawns may as well be robots______ they praticaly are robots and are ment that WAY FOR A REASON SPOILER ALEART AT THE TRUE ENDING THE GUYS PLAYING AS THE MAKER SAYS THAT PAWNS ARE YOU BUT WITH OUT EMOTION AND Reason they have no reaction anything they have no soul!!!!! Thier meaning is to help the damn arrisen beat the dragon and give them a soul
I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health what bout combine shit for use such stuff such as things to sell? or thing to make stuff with or your interest liking combine a empty scroll and broken blade to make a one time use powerfull spell you faget
The graphics are surprisingly bad______ DUDE SRSLY LIKE I SAY GRAPHICS GAMEPLAY DOES ITS LIKE YOU GOT ON TO COMPLAIN ABOUT SOMETHING _
The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read_____ WHATS A MATER GRANDPA CANT SEE DUDE SRSLY YOUR PROBABLY GETING TO OLD FOR FUCKING VIDEO GAMES MAN I CAN SEE THE FONTS FINE.
The voice acting is generic and annoying___ they are anoying ill give you just that one thing

Villages and towns look lifeless ___ auctualy they are quite lively if you observe them more
Enemies are monumentally durable MENT THAAT WAY TO ADD TO THE FUN OF ARMOR CUSTOMIZATION
Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any ___________ what are you two year old kid? you objectives on the fucking board is boring but story missions are the bomb . -.-
It is such a vacuous experience. I always try to finish a game before talking about it, but this just crushed me. So all I can do now is complain…

And if you want me to go into more detail as to why I class this as the worst game I have played, then be sure to check back on bagofgames.com where I will definitely plonk this on the Top Worst list of the year. bro fuck you for this

I’m gonna assume English isn’t your first language, and maybe not your second or third either. You can’t exactly talk about someone’s brain capacity when you can’t even type coherent sentences. But seriously, this game isn’t as good as everyone thinks, it isn’t the worst, but one playthrough of reviving shitty pawns was all I could endure.

Are we playing the same game? Obviously a rhetorical question, but I find it so strange that your points of contention aren’t even remotely gripes I could come up with even if I am being honesty critical. I can certainly find games with better story, gameplay and visuals but that’s with every other game in this business. I find it so much more easier to enjoy a game by not trying to compare it to a previous experience. It’s so bloody easy to critique and even harder to appreciate. But then again you have the luxury of expressing your opinion at the cost of about $55 versus a studio who sets out to make a game with the objective that it will captivate a certain audience at the cost of about $40 million. You are clearly not the audience they are after.

… “Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced!” – I consider Dragon Age one of the finest RPGs that I have ever played. But the combat was utter shit! So what kept me enthralled were other elements. I could have easily bitch about the combat and fed the game to my gluttonous pigs but eventually even the combat grew on me.

I know it’s really hard to grasp but do you think any developer who sets out to design a game doesn’t think their game is the next best thing? There’s so much that we aren’t aware of that goes on during development, so many great ideas that are removed or that never even makes it into the game. And yet developers persevere to the bitter end in the hopes that their blood, sweat and tears can be appreciated.

With a heading like yours,”Dragon’s Dogma Is The Worst Game I Have Ever Played!”, how can anybody take you serious! Unless it’s the only game that you have ever played, you are trying to blast this pebble way past the stratosphere to proof a void point!

But I will not stoop and start comparing games to make a point. There’s so much negative to say about Skyrim but also so many positives to address. This is not mutually exclusive! Just keep it mind that a game might not be for you and addressing it in your way hurts it a lot more than is good for the sake of this industry.

wow….you must be new to difficult games…thought the story is a bit bland the combat in this game is excellent and unlike most games the AI (pawns) can actually give good and useful information, and I do not know how you found the chimera at the beginning to be difficult when it took only a few minutes to dispatch for me. Also I do not know if you turned your UI off but you can see its health bar.
(hardcore gaming for over 12 years)

Hey Cody, newsflash. Just because you suck at game doesn’t mean it’s awful and not worth playing. Such claims just make you look stupid and provides your little gaming site with more illegitimacy than it already has.

So I bought this game. I had to put it into the xbox! Can you believe that? So after I spent a good 10 seconds on putting the game into the machine, I then had to hit the start button. Not to mention that I then had to chose new game! Combat sucks, I was required to hit buttons on my game pad in order to get my character to swing his sword. Who ever heard of such a thing.

Opinions usually cant be wrong according to webster’s dictionary, but in this case, the fact that his points were based out of personal inadequacies and made simply out of spite and an almost apparent desire to hurt the sales of the game, affecting the chances of a sequel for those who liked it, in this case his opinion is very wrong, morally atleast.

Shut up you fag. Have a specific type of vocation on your team. You really don’t know what your talking about just stop. Seriously. You need to actually experience the game for more than six hours dumbass. Are you fucking stupid?! You call this game The Worst Game Ever and talk about how bad it is even though it’s not. Its just you fucking suck. Go to Skyrim or Dragon Age if you want your hand held. Oh wait you so fucking stupid you don’t even know how to open the skills hotbar.

You suck dick at games man. I could understand how you could dislike Bioshock or Red Dead, but saying they’re some of the worst games out there shows that you’re very new to video games. I’ll tell you what sport, if you play more than 12 games in your lifetime, then I’ll consider your opinion valid. Until then you just seem like some dildo who saw Zero Punctuation but didn’t understand the justification for his incessant complaining that makes him fun to watch.

1 The story is basically non-existent- I have to agree with you a little on this
2 Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced- I dont see how you think it is dull because I find that it is exciting.. but I guess everyone is entitled to an opinion.
3 Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight- Just safe more often if you think save spots are too far apart… duh
4 There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour- what does this have to do with anything? Games like Dark Souls, Oblivion and Skyrim don’t have customization.
5 The map is close to useless- Not really… You have to explore, that is part of an RPG
6 Traveling anywhere takes forever- Because you are used to the fast travel of Oblivion and Skyrim… I actually think it is a brilliant idea because it is a large open world and being an RPG makes me want to explore.
7 The Pawns may as well be robots- well if you read about them it explains they have almost no free will or emotions
8 I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health- you can mix things together and make better things
9 The graphics are surprisingly bad- I can’t explain how much you are wrong
10 The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read- i disagree I thought it was a nice size font but I guess it depends on the TV and that isnt the creators fault just get a better TV
11 The voice acting is generic and annoying- No
12 Villages and towns look lifeless- No, you obviously didn’t look around in any town you were in (including the first town)
13 Enemies are monumentally durable- yes… just tell everyone it is to hard for you we wont hold anything against you if the game is too hard for you.
14 Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any- Q-U-E-S-T-S it means do things and most of the quests aren’t boring but there is the occasional flower picking quest.

This has been a review of a review brought to you by an awesome person.

Story exists. You’d be blind or stupid to miss it. It is pretty standard affair. Actually there is more than one story in the entire game, but most revolves around the pawns, and your character. Several of the NPCs have their own little stories you can take part in, some longer than others.
With Dark Arisen you gain even further insight into the game’s main story.

Ya as many have said you are clearly a poor gamer, of no skill or talent or ideas on how to play. You are also trolling like no other and all gaming companies and stores should black list you good day.

I disagree with just about everything you said here. I think the game is fantastic. It is difficult and is supposed to be difficult. However, it’s not as hard as you’re making it seem. I’m a level 13 mage and will the skills i have so far i can kill most bandits in a few hits. Are you learning new skills and augments? Are you buying new equiptment/armor? You may want to learn up on the game a little bit as it really doesn’t sound like you understand it or what an “open world” game really is…good luck to you.

Well, I have to say it is flawed in many, many ways. I took a quest to escort some bloke from an Inn, im now stuck in a Fort a short distance from my objectives, 2 Pawns dead, a Chimera, 8000 Harpies and 40 ice, magic weird looking things and then god knows what else between me and it, never going to get forward with only my and my companion, and the only way back is to wait tediously till dawn and then cross half the world on foot back to the City. After which I would then pick up some pawns again, try the trip a 2nd time and probably fare no better, its really kind of silly. So, im sitting in a fort reflecting on how hopeless it all is.

If the game is going to be this hard – I mean all I am doing is walking the ROAD- it might at least give you an inclination of quest difficulty and some FREE fast return system. I doubt ill survive forwards or backwards to be honest. I lost 2 pawns completing 90% of the trip, the last 10% is impossible and Ill never survive the 90% back to the City.

I’ve read and acknowledged your post, yet the whole time I was thinking “oh shit that sounds awesome.”

I guess it was different for me considering I died the first to a group of bandits that ran me down. I immediately knew, This game was not going to a walk in the park. I felt like I would if I were really in that situation some fisherman who thought he could set out and be a hero then gets his ass kicked as soon as he’s confronted. For me that was when I knew I was gonna have a blast.

So, I took my time, never traveled at night, would run away If I knew or felt I wasn’t ready and fought when I knew my odds were good or if I was backed in a corner (much like I really would in that situation.) I’m 60 hours in(I take my time, explore, and refuse to use ferry stones), I’m lvl 51, and I run around like nothing can stop me, because it usually can’t. I worked hard for that and I’m loving every minute of it.

There is still enemies out there I have yet to encounter and I know they will likely put me back in my place. I look forward to rising above them as well.

This comment was my exact feeling when I played this game. I decided to go exploring after leaving the first encampment and went up the mountain pass, and encountered some wolves. Barely made it out of that, and then hit some bandits and got my ass handed to me. And that was fine. It taught me that while this is an open-world game, the game wasn’t afraid to push me down and tell me, “No, you’re not ready for this yet. Come back later.”

So I did. And WRECKED those bandits. And then four more teams of them. And went on my merry way. I felt accomplished and like I was getting stronger, which, if you play more of the game, you find out was the point of the “story-less” campaign. For you to go from meek fisherman to an epic hero out of legend.

I think your reply is lacking as much as the original view. While the game doesn’t suck, it certainly does have flaws. The hardness would be fine if they gave you a little more to go on. Its very hard to plan with little to no information.

Theres no logical reason a level 16 Fighter cant lead a 4 man escort party along a path from A-B without having half the party massacred. And please dont tell me a Chimera, and 20 Harpies setting upon you is “easy” or even possible at level 15, it just isn’t. The Ogre took literally 30 minutes to reduce his health and then to my shock and horror I see all I did is reduce one of his little “lights” and his health jumped back to zero…….now the Chimera is 10 times harder!!

The point is there is no way I could realistically have known that the quest would be so unreasonable and now im literally stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way forward or back. Im going to try a full sprint back (bearing in mind I have come 90% of the way) but since its unlikely ill make it, ill probably have to restart the GAME. Thats just very very bad design.

I dont want an easy game, I just want a game which actually gives me a chance to prepare and doesn’t suck me in and leave me screwed for something as silly as this.

What do they think I can do with no healer, 2 party members down stuck in the middle of nowhere with Chimeras and all manner of hell blocking my path at level 16??? The game is meant to give you SOME kind of chance at survival, or at least retreat!! I have nothing but a restart looming which after completing that long Pawn dungeon quest I really dont want to do!!

Dark Souls is better because the game gives you visually clues as to the strength of enemies. Such as a 10 foot tall knight being much more powerful than a scarcely protected undead warrior. It doesn’t just force you to suffer to see how things work. The combat is also not clustered and tedious.

In Dragon’s Dogma, the fact that a bandit can take 10 times as much punishment as a wolf is ludicrous and just poor game design. Dragon’s Dogma is not difficult, at least not in the traditional sense. Slapping huge amounts of health onto enemies is just lazy and crudely unrealistic. It’s just a way of disguising how horrible the AI is.

Call of Duty’s game play is fluid, responsive, appropriate and structured, which is everything Dragon’s Dogma isn’t.

I honestly have no clue what your talking about, ive yet to meet any bandits other than the armored ones that had ridiculous healthbars, im pretty sure a 50ft tall cyclops is a good indication of a difficult enemy, fool. All the small enemies werent hard, and if they were then go back and level more, thats what an RPG is, you raise your character, get stronger, and then you move forward. At around level 20 you basically steamroll every enemy you meet. Which is my quipe with the game, that after the initial challenge it gets almost to easy. But this could be fixed with a DLC like Blue Dragons difficulty DLC, and maybe a little more variety in wild mosters, not just meet the hydra once and never see it again, id like to see it slithering around at night when im vulnerable and have the thrill of having to survive it, a monster pack would be nice.

“Call of Duty’s game play is fluid, responsive, appropriate and structured, which is everything Dragon’s Dogma isn’t.”….and here we have it, don’t we? The inevitable comparison to a FPS that obviously makes absolute sense when dealing with an open-world RPG that requires some sort of critical thinking. Please, have you finished this game? Or better yet, did you ever level your character past 15? “Slapping huge amounts of health onto enemies is just lazy and crudely unrealistic. It’s just a way of disguising how horrible the AI is.” ??? What does this sentence mean exactly? It sounds rubbish-y. For some reason in this game, when you level up, health of opponents goes down. I think my 4 year old daughter figured that out.
“I don’t know a single thing about my character, so it just comes off as weird and genuinely stupid. What is he fighting for exactly?” and,”It then pulls out my heart and eats it…I can’t wait for that to be explained…”
It’s funny how you actually get rewarded with answers to these questions by actually playing the game until the end…what a novel approach to storytelling, you know? Waiting until the end to divulge the secret and find out what happens and all..how dare they.
“I keep ineffectively shooting it, and then one of its heads bursts off like a champagne cork. I guess that barrel it swallowed was totally pointless…okay.”…tell me I am understanding this incorrectly. Are you saying that you do not understand that the swallowed barrel has actually exploded when you hit it? Is that what you’re saying…I mean are you thinking that the cutscene right before that was to happen was all fluff? Tell me I’m wrong.
I point out these examples only to inform and point out to whatever poor soul attempts to read your “review” how important it is to actually experience a full product before criticizing. However, it seems like, at least the way it’s written, that you already had it out for this game. That’s just what it sounds like, of course.

Well man this might be kinda pointless but you could just load back to the last inn or rift stone. I had the same problem. killed the first Chimera. used all my healing stuff. then had to run from both ogers/ cyclops whatever they were. then the girl theifs at the fort killed me cuz they didnt want no guys in their. so i just started over from the inn. but i didnt have to do that quest cause somehow it disapeared from the notice bourds after i achely got high enough to do it.

Wasn’t going to say anything at first ’till i saw this comment of it being impossible LOL- because either I’m god which i highly doubt by the way, or just quiet decent at gaming while you + the reviewer are just not meant for these games.

I have to say this because well… i just have to. I killed a chimera no probs with a lvl 15 odd fighter… just took a looong time mainly due to goblins running amok and just being a pest- As I’m used to ‘hard’ rpgs like demon souls or dark souls and even monster hunter, you realise its all/mostly about the preparation before the fight. so I personally don’t see the problem in the game.

If you ever bothered to play “monster hunter” i shall say if you cant beat a decent dragon in that game eg. Rathian/Rathalos are the basic ones, than you may as well not play dark souls/demon souls let alone this game, reason? timing and good tactics(in this game getting new ‘skills’ come in handy) with added bonus of reflex etc.

As for the story i would assume that it was made to create your own story as well as find out by yourself what things mean rather than spoon feed everything like almost every other game(at least that is my explanation for the odd start). Try fight the Amber dragon? oh wait never mind didn’t get up to him ill assume.

Anyway i on a final note, i agree, the game seems too difficult at times but i wounder, is it not meant to be that way? Would the designer or game directer just go hey man you know what, lets make this game absolutely impossible!?!

I mean come on you really want EVERYTHING to just fall on your lap then go swing a sword once or something and every single thing dies on the map, if your answer is yes or anything close to yes than i suggest playing a game like tetris or something, might more suit your gaming style, rules are simple and direct- pretty sure don’t even need a description but also sure there is one somewhere.

enough of the down talk though, just sayin’ maybe you guys just want to be pampered instead of play a game and enjoy it hahaha i mean come on, you really read your own review and went “yep this is completely legit!” i wouldn’t even go to as far as calling that an opinion, its just down talk like i just did to you about gaming ability….

Speaking of the Chimera beign devilishly difficult to beat, in the Prologue – which ‘Stretch’ doesn’t seem to understand in any way – you are level 20 and that Chimera is INCREDIBLY easy to kill. If you are having trouble with mini-bosses as such, then go and level up from smaller quests or go and explore closer to the capital.
This game needs preperation of a different sort. It matters not whether you have one armour or another, you need to prepare by leveling up and aquiring new abilities. Ofcourse armours vary in quality and do help, as do weapons, but with a single set of armour bought at the start of the game I found myself doing just fine and finding better armours around Gransys in caves and scuh, if not, I would upgrade it myself.
As your failed retreat tactics, why didn’t you retreat BEFORE you got yourelf trapped? You should also take enemies out one by one, not round them all up into one massive pile and them complain that you’re unable to defeat them whilst stuck in a trap you brought yourself into.
One thing I must agree, though, is the save system. It is simply atrocious. Besides that, I don’t understand why you blame the game for everything that you caused to happen.

*I apologise for any spelling mistakes that I could have made but I simply don’t have the time to go back and check every word.

Or maybe level up as the tool tips state when you’re getting destroyed by an enemy?

It’s not rocket science. If you’re getting killed easily by a normal group of monsters then you’re too low and need to level up before you proceed.

Also, I’m not sure if you noticed, but your companions yell out the best ways to kill boss monsters. This makes it considerably easier than simply hacking away at them as you would any other normal monster. It really isn’t that hard to realize when they basically yell for you to do it a certain way over and over.

Lastly though, trying to use logic as to why a video game is bad is just… ignorant. Logic does not work for all video games. Especially video games involving monsters that don’t exist in real life.

different areas of the map are more difficult than others. Pawns who know about different regions will warn you of the difficulty before you even set out. first pawn guild quest will net you a port-crystal. which you could use to get out if you have ferrystones. Every pawn in the game comes standard with the line, “if you feel an enemy is beyond you there is no shame in fleeing”. level 16 isn’t really that high in the game especially in northern gransys or anywhere near the great wall. pawns can be hired walking down the road so even if you lose some you can get more on your travels. different creatures have different strategies and tactics that work against them. dieing does not force you to restart the game it reloads your most recent save. you should be able to outrun most enemies in the game as long as you can balance your stamina. this is a game about learning from your mistakes. knowing how to use your enemy’s weaknesses, and knowing when to flee. if you lost 2 pawns on your way there, there were some massive hints that it was above your skill level.

I pretty much agree with the writer. The game is solely made by all Japanese guys. They only employed some westerners to do the localization and voice-acting, as shown by the end credit. How good are the Capcom Japanese know about Western myths? It looks like a cultural clash here. lol.

The combat system at first looks okay. Then it starts to become repetitive. For eg playing as a Warrior wielding a two-handed weapon, you will continue to use the same attacks over and over again. All attacks are AI-controlled automatic aim. Need to get close to enemies to press button, or miss aimlessly. The combat system is not awesome, just get simplified.

The story is nonsensical. They just give you a vague idea what it is about. At the end when you finish the main story, it is still vague. It talks about something religious, no end no beginning circle and NPCs always ask you to “pray”. It is better not to talk about something religious in a game as it confuses people. The Japanese just love to make everything profound.

This is not a bad game. Just too bad it may not be acceptable by everyone. Me included.

“I pretty much agree with the writer. The game is solely made by all Japanese guys.” – Sorry bud, but this game was made by Capcom EU. The European branch of Capcom. So the team that worked on this game were westerners.

“The combat system at first looks okay. Then it starts to become repetitive.” – I guess you’ve never really played an RPG & picked a class then stuck with it. You need to grind to get better and have more skills and attacks.

“The story is nonsensical. They just give you a vague idea what it is about.” – Your stopping an evil from terrorizing the world essentially. Basically every video game with a hero ever. So the story may be a little dry for you, focus on something fun about it like the fact your literally climbing on giant monsters to fight and defeat them.

I know some people play games solely for a good story and others play purely for the game play. Some of us just like to enjoy a game that isn’t too easy & some of us just like to play games. Some of the people in this comment thread and the guy who posted this article don’t seem to get what the game is about or how its supposed to be played. Just stick with the games you know and leave the games everyone else enjoy out of your life.

This is just bad. I love the game itself. Its a nice pace of change from the((i decided to get it and play it first instead of ghost recon, diablo 3 and GW2)). ((on top of that these will be the only games that might actually hold its salt during the summer because summer is a dry spell of sports games)). But i digress after reading your article it dawned upon me that your incredibly dense and the other i agree with MattS YOU WANT YOUR HAND HELD and probably your arse wiped as well.

Combat system/controls is pretty straight forward and easy.((and obviously with your level of expertise you probably shouldn’t have chosen a mage))

Story-line is yea pretty much bland. If you havent figured it out its almost similar DragonHeart. ((if the dragon had Sean Connery’s voice))

Difficulty was on spot. Its a Capcom game they are kinda notorious for making things slightly difficult. I mean it wouldn’t be a game if it didn’t have some sort of difficulty right? To even give you some glimmer of hope into your despair your pawns give tips and help you out.

Items/Tools yea some of them were pretty useless but if you remembered earlier castlevania games ((before they made the whip OP)) you had to use certain items to actually defeat your foes especially if you didnt have the necessary skill or level to proceed.

Pawn system yea they do get annoying from time to time but hey they are really helpful in a “proper” party ((2 mages, 1 melee/range, 1 melee best party)) also they somewhat provide comedic relief. ((tossing them on your back and then throwing them onto explosive barrels))

Traveling/Map/Towns yea uhhhm it wouldn’t be an RPG if we didn’t need to explore our surroundings ((also if you had explored further you would’ve gotten a badge from the bandit leader granting you safe passage)). Sure yea getting to the destination took time but that’s all for the games difficulty especially when you had to make it through the night ((because aggro mobs and random chimeras SUCK)).

Graphics/cinematic its pretty decent its not too extravagant but hey your using a 360. slightly different graphics. ((PS3 user, I’m not hating on 360 i just prefer free internet LOL))

Anyway my only complaint is just walking in the night and suddenly a wild chimera appears. ((They are easy its just they pop out of nowhere in the night.))

“Games can influence people in ways that any other medium can’t come close to and as I get older I keep understanding and respecting them more.” Clearly sir you did not respect this one. You ragedquit that alone shows your incompetence.

I agree completely with this article, Dragon’s Dogma is complete and utter shit. We’ll start with the graphics, now I’m not a graphics whore, but DD is without a doubt, the worst looking, dull, brown game I’ve ever fucking seen.

Combat? You know, I can understand big huge monsters shrugging off my blows, but bandits and goblins and wolves? For fuck’s sake, I might as well be hitting them with a rolled up newspaper and a flyswatter. They fucking completely ignore my attack and then fucking one shot me.

Story? practically non existent to the point where it makes Skyrim’s story look like Oscar winning material.

There are just so many other problems with this game, the map, the darkness at night which completely wears out its welcome within the first hour, the pawns that never shut the fuck up even after the personality chair at the inn, the absolutely fucking archaic menus and eequipment systems, I could go on and on.

I couldn’t be more disappointed with this game, I downloaded the demo and loved it, must have played it at least 20 times, and spent all that time creating my character and pawn, only to buy the game and be completely dissapointed with it. You know if you like the game, good on you, I wish I liked it too, so I didn’t feel like i wasted 60 bucks.

Just because you can say the game was shit, does not make it or its graphics bad, that just makes you a callous prick trying to deliberately berate a perfectly good game, and then you few that did hate it try to band together and congratulate eachother just cus u were able to find one “flaw”… Pitiful.

wow im here just to say this guy is a huge trolling idiot. once i saw his most hatd list of games (especially red dead and bioshock) i knew this article was going to be full of shyt. this guy is an editor??? he needs to get fired stripped of all rights to post articles because its obvious this guy is a dumbass

I, like the majority of other people commenting, disagree with just about everything you said. In fact while reading this the only engaging thought i had is “why does this guy bother playing games?”. Seriously, being bad at a game does not make it a bad game. You want your hand held constantly go play the sims.

i’ve at level 40 and i’ve only died about ten times so far, most of which involved me jumping off cliffs by accident. like, when the fucking loading screen tells you to be prepared when you go out questing maybe that should clue you in… that’s sad you don’t know how to play role playing games. dragon’s dogma isn’t perfect, but i love it anyway. LOVE. it’s something new/exciting and i desperately want a sequel. my biggest complaint: it was over too quickly!

Dragons Dogma 2 will likely be great, they still have a great deal to learn about WRPGs however there’s a lot of very new stuff in this and some great new ideas. The quests are rather poor, the magic is utterly awesome best in any RPG by far for me, the fights are titanic and the ability to climb up on things and even get carried up on a dragons back, wicked.

The ability to wander into stupendously hard monsters randomly, not so great when the pawn AI is nerf. Also the pawn AI really lets the game down at times, if this game had a more tactical side where you could command and maneuver yours pawns (ala Tom Clancy) it would really make these titanic battles feel awesome. Id be seriuously hoping the do a sequel and take note of where they went wrong. Also the world is seriously empty of things, places and stuff to do. needs much more caves, ruins and places to explore. You can walk a long with with not a cave of dungeon to explore anywhere.

Honestly, i agree with you, the game is definantly put on top of my list of RPGs, simply becuse it combines all the good elements, quite well, into one very great game, i enjoy the dark souls narrative style, and i enjoy the small details, like being soaked with water. This game has a lot lf soul in it, an my pawn AI has never been face palmingly bad, they are followers, and by extension just do what battle warrants. Not really needing them to think out the box, just damage sponge while i experiment. But most of all i enjoyed the threat of running into a huge enemy i cant kill easily. Makes the victoty satisfying. As was with the very first escort mission. My only issue was that the same enemies spawned in the same places, and that there seemed to be a lack in them, i wanted to fight the hydra and cockatrice more than once, have the effect of finding them randomely slithering about in the wild. An maybe a little more class diversity. But other than that its great. Dying was a learning experience, not a failure. This game has a new style, to many damn it based on similarities, or lack thereof, to other games. And that is not the way to review a game. This guys opinion… Was no opinion, it was a public damning of a game for no reason other than to be callous.

Wow, talk about picking away at a great game just to have a rant. Most of your points are blown out of proportion just to have a sook. Did you even give the game a chance? It sounds like you wanted to review something else and that game was given to someone else. I won’t make an effort to read your reviews in the future since being a good reviewer is shown in how you can build a solid criticism, while detailing the good and bad of a game, you just went straight for whinging hate and information that falls woefully short

I get the fact you hate the game, but did you honestly give it a try or were you reviewing as you played and not putting your heart into it? When I first play demon souls I broke the first copy because I got so frustrated with it, but now I own another copy as well as dark souls and love them both. Skyrims story line was not that great and it’s a wonderful game. Instant gratification sounds fun but in games that you do get that you get bored fast. I admit the game is short but it’s that just leaves you wanting more, but you didn’t really mention how short the story line was… does that mean you gave up, did you cry to mommy how the bandits in the game didn’t die when you hit them with one fireball? anyways my point being grow up stop trashing games you don’t like you didn’t say one positive thing, so go fuck yourself good sir!

I played the game for 6 hours. 3, then 3 again. I gave Dragon’s Dogma every oppurtunity to be good. I was doing exactly what it told me and allowed me to do. But every time I tried to have fun it stopped me dead in my tracks. THAT is why it is the worst game I have ever played. Not because it’s bad or poorly made (even though it is), it’s because it lifts me up so I’m feeling amazing for a second…and then plummets me into the dirt and knocks me down whenever I try and get back up. It does EVERYTHING wrong, in my book anyway.

I cried to mommy because the bandits didn’t die in 40!!!! hits.

Why shouldn’t I trash games I don’t like? Isn’t that exactly what a reviewer does, even though this isn’t a review?

I said the part with the red worms was good. That’s ONE positive thing. The rest is trash.

the part with red worms was good? The part with the red worms was good, he says?! Oh my god who the hell is this guy?! I now feel like I’ve read a “review” by a 15 year old.
You played for 6 hours, did you? You even broke it up into two 3 hrs sessions…how cute. I am at a loss…I really am.
When will they stop allowing children with no experience to write reviews? When?!
You said you’ve played Demons Souls? Or maybe it was Dark Souls? I think you even said in a post that at least it had visual cues to enemy strength, i.e. size. Good grief, are you serious? It doesn’t matter because I do not believe you sir.

Have to agree with almost everything the author said…
After trying every class, fully upgrading gear, buffing the hell out of the garbage pawns, its still torturous to play.
Have to say this takes it from “too human” and the “witcher 2” as the most painful game to play.

To everyone who brings up “skyrim/oblivion”
A) not valid (single player experience, based on exploration)
B) you almost assuredly have never experienced a hardcore bethesda game (Daggerfall, morrowind)

Skyrim was harder than Morrowind. Morrowind I just power leveled, expecting the challenge. Skyrim was harder because leveling each individual skill, in a realistic manner, took longer than leveling my spear wielding mage in morrowind to godhood.

Stretch, if you don’t like the game, I understand. If the game doesn’t suite your tastes, then it doesn’t suite your tastes. As a random consumer on any other public forum, go ahead and state that this game was the worst game you have ever played–no problem. However, whether you’re an amateur or professional reviewer, it’s your job to provide a solid, grounded critique based on careful and intelligent observation such that potential buyers may use your review, along with other credible reviews they may have read, to accurately weigh whether or not they should spend the $60 now, wait for a price drop, or abandon the purchase altogether.

The game’s story is not non-existent. Although it may come off as a cliche “Chosen One” kind of plot at first glance and will probably have you wondering, “What the [email protected]#^ is going on” after the first few cutscenes, it turns out to be very profound and fascinating, have you the mind to pay close attention to detail and see it through to the end.

All of the factors which you, Stretch, claimed to be random and unexplained, are actually quite explained in the game’s natural progression or with common sense. In the dialogue, you’ll get subtle hints as to what’s really going on in the world, which you might piece together yourself for either a better understanding of the game or a completely obscure one, depending on how high your critical thinking. However, if you’re not paying attention to or skip the dialogue entirely, you will be left confused.
Be that as it may, the story works in a way where everything all comes together in the end, with almost all of your key questions answered (literally), while leaving some elements up to good old healthy imagination, thereby leaving you, the gamer, with a lasting impression.
It’ll have you saying, “Holy crap! It all makes sense now!~~”

Of course, in open world RPGs, main storyline tends to yield to side quests and exploration. Dragon’s Dogma handles side quests fairly well and in a unique way. While some quests may feel tedious, with the reward not feeling worth your hard time and effort, most of the side quests are very well-rewarding and leave you with an overall satisfaction . Whether you’re running an errand for an esteemed nobleman, stealthily tailing someone late at night for a shady peasant, escorting a merchant across a trade route, or adventuring far off in search of a powerful tome, there’s plenty of things you can do to keep entertained and earn your gold which you can then use to upgrade your weapons and armor, which you so desperately MUST do in order to survive.

The combat system is very deep and engaging. You also always have the option to change your vocation, learn new skills or switch up your skill-set at the various Inns spread about Gransys. I recommend sticking to the Fighter, Warrior, or Mystic Knight classes for first time players, as these are the easiest to become accustomed to.
When in combat, you must pay careful attention to all of the enemies around you at all times. At first, the enemies may seem overwhelming and you might experience harsh frustration; but with a fair learning curve and a bit of perseverance, you’ll find yourself doing away with those pesky wolves and bandits in no time, leaving the real challenge to the wild ogres, cyclops, griffins, and other intensely powerful monsters all of which are very challenging, very entertaining and highly rewarding.

The graphics can seem a bit bland and clunky in some areas, especially in the character modeling. If you compare the environment graphics in Dragon’s Dogma to Skyrim, Skyrim will win every time. However, that’s not to say Dragon’s Dogma doesn’t have charms of its own, as it most certainly does. It should also be addressed that the graphics in Dragon’s Dogma, though appear unpolished, are still fairly decent and work well for the game as a whole unit. The more time you spend in the game, the more it all grows on you as well.

While the voice acting could be much better and the much animations smoother, you still get the sense that each character you come across, save from only a few generics, have their own personality and life about them.

The soundtrack to Dragon’s Dogma is excellent. The ambient sounds for each area, time of day, and situation really helps to engage the player in the world and will only heighten your experience immensely.

Overall, Dragon’s Dogma is a decent game with much to look forward to. It will challenge you, frustrate you, satisfy you, and surprise you, if you were to give it a fair chance.

Let us not forget that RPG stands for Role Playing Game. So if you’re not willing to take the part of your character and role-play as if you’re a living entity in the country of Gransys, then you’re not really willing to play this game.
If you are a fan of RPGs, then you’ll definitely get your fill of excitement and adventure in Dragon’s Dogma.

This person right here typed a far better and more accurate review than the author of this article. I would like to note that when it came to this review, and a few other well typed ones that gave the game a positive review and completely contradicted this page’s main article, ‘ol childish Stretch had absolutely nothing to say, yet on many other commented positive reviews, if it was in any way flawed or took a jab at Stretch himself, he always seemed to be there to say how he was right or they were wrong, with most of it being more of the same crap he put in his article.

The story is all about you being the arisen and chasing after the dragon. If you missed this, I’m not sure what the hell your looking at. The character leveling system is a great leveling system. You get to go indepth with a class, and if you don’t like it branch out to a different class. You can even take any unlocked augments with you.

The combat system is a system where you have to be smarter than apparently you are. You NEED to exploit weakness. The chimera is simple, lob off the snake, jump on the goat head, than destroy the lion. Or have someone in your party using magic.

The lack of attacks come from your inexperience in your class. Like I said, they have a class system, level up and you’ll find more spells unlocked.

As for pawns being bland, you apparently haven’t discovered the Inclination system yet. Your pawn will learn from your behavior (or potions that can be bought with rune points) and start to develop its own behavior patterns. Guardian, scather, utilitarian are just a few.

I don’t get what you said about saving, you can save whenever you want to, the checkpoint saves (saves that happen when you use a runestone or sleep, or during before critical boss battles) happen to give you a place to go back to if you get stuck out in the wilderness… Sorry you actually have to do something yourself in a game…

Pick up EVERYTHING you obviously didn’t see the enhance items menu at the weapon smith. There’s very few things in this game that don’t have a good valid use.

Bandits were hard, they should be. You’re a fisherman, the kill people for a living. Later on in the game you’ll walk through them. Obviously your party wasn’t set right. The way the health system works, having 2 mages is nearly pointless since you can’t heal past your grey bar and mages are to squishy to survive hard hitting opponents (bandits).

Sorry dude, but basically all your saying is the game was to hard for you, and you didn’t try out half the stuff in it. You need to prepare before going out, you need to balance your party adequately and you need to listen to your pawns when they tell you how to defeat things. Wolves died easily to fire, because they are weak to fire. Weird how that works huh?

Dude….. “wolves kill people for a living, so why are they 10 times easier to kill than bandits?”
Bandits kill people for a living too…. With weapons and armor………. Wolves dont have weapons and armor….. And why dont you go find sonm direwolves then? Theyr pretty tough for bitches like you who can handle crazy in your face combat. Maybe if you got past level fuckin 17 or played for more than 15 hours youd get somewhere. This aint call of duty dude, ya cant just pick the game up and beat it in 4 hours on your first go. And playin as a mage… I didnt like being a mage, try a strider. Its way more fun to sprint up to that first cyclops and climb up its back till youre clingin to the top of its head and slashin away at that eye. Learn to play, beat the game, pay attention, and THEN review. Dont get passed the damn tutorials (that first part of the game you were so quick to cry about) and then expect the game to suddenly explain EVERYTHING in 30 seconds. People like you are the reason others decide not to even try good games

The way i think of why the character was a bland mute person as i believe you put it was because of his lack of a heart. I would want my soul and heart back. So i would find the dragon so i didnt live a dull life. And if you wanted everything to be realistic and make sense go and do stuff in real life. The others of us who will enjoy the game will live in a fantastic fantasy world and relax so that we dont have to deal with real world stuff all the time.

Seriously is this a real website? Do you get paid and if so how closely related are you to the retard that runs this site? Actually my bad I know some people with mental issues who can piece together a better article than this. I will never be visiting this site for anything. Bad Google BAD!

Actually you shouldn’t joke about mental issues because my father was diagnosed with mentally retardation 9 months ago and the rest of my family with probably be diagnosed with it as well. People make fun of him at school now because of his new diagnosis. i like Dragon’s Dogma and so does my retardation father. So you need to stop joking about such a serious situation, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL!!!!! My fathers retarded!

The game is the exact opposite of everything you said. If this is the worst game you ever played, you haven’t played many games. Everything about this game is good. They could only improve it by adding more, but the base game is fine.

If you don’t train your pawns properly then you will see problems, but that’s your fault.

Bagofgames.com? First time I come here to read a review, will not do that again. If you say the bad is game, you spent less than 5 hours on it; meaning you have a super slim view of the entired game. Whaaat a trash of a review! Game is great once you realise what its about. Its not a “story” game, its a combat rpg. combat is brilliant once YOU take controll of it. Learn new skills, mix them with fitting augments and those of your pawn. Hire fitting pawns. Stop beeing an ass.

I purchased this game today, I concur about a few things but the most annoying is most certainly the difficulty. That being said I don’t like to step up to difficult games much. The character creator and the pawns is quite a nice innovention.

Maybe the voice loops can beoome a little repetative but I think it breaks the ice when you are roaming the wilderness aimlessly doing the (as you put) tireless walking from point A to point B.

I think you should have given the game longer (which is what I am doing). Ive had my butt kicked by the same bandit 5 times and kept going back for more until the bastard fell. Is the ratio slightly flawed? Yeah probably but as somone else said above… its capcom they love difficulty I dont recall a game that they have released that hasnt brought about challenge in some shape or form.

Bottom line is, don’t give up too fast and if you get your ass beat then go back again fuming and rip their asses apart, if they beat you a second time run past em…

P.S. the people posting in reply to your critique are mostly angry because you have not remained objective. No one can get away with panning a game outright. Give your reasons and say fair enough without having to dignify them with trash talk.

Plus play the game for a decent duration 6 hours is not enough to get well versed in a game and I mean any game. This is an RPG so in order to write a half decent review youd have to soak up atleast 72 hours of gameplay before being able to write anything tangable.

The thing about Dragon’s Dogma which is something that most games don’t do which is a double edge sword for it is that it’s more real life then it is video game think about it:

the map is virtually worthless, well since there are no actual names to roads and not a million high ways then ya the map is going to suck especially since it’s the middle ages not modern day

I mean granted some things are gone to far I mean you might as well pretend that you also got amnesia after your heart got pulled out because suddenly places you would have known aren’t on your mini map and you have to enter it to find out what it is yes that is kind of a pour idea but hey that’s video games sometimes they take a idea and take it to far

granted this game is not easy and sometimes can be frustrating with the quests but again it’s pretty much like a your actually living the world like it was this world (think you just walk into a job interview because you know everything without cracking open a book or asking someone about it?) as apposed to playing a video game I think they did well and I’m mostly happy with it and hope that if they feel they can make a sequel that they’ll improve more on there faults and just make it that much better

(like being able to use the rift stones as a sort of teleportation device yes I know it’s “not real” but since the pawns kind of use the rift for teleportation why can’t you? just would be kind of nice when you just want to get somewhere a bit faster and it would still be “realistic” in that you’d have to go to the rift stone not just “fast travel” to one or to a place directly)

Also the monsters are to hard, well if a wolf came up to you and bit your head off ya I’m sure you’d be dead too in one hit, I mean again it’s a give and take I’ve had no problem taking out wolves with my fire spells but take like a troll hello? a troll has harder skin you might as well be fighting the side of a mountain because that’s pretty much what they are described as in this world’s society so that’s how they built them that’s why the game is CONSTANTLY telling you, MAKE SURE YOUR PREPARED FOR A FIGHT!!! in other words you actually have to go to the shop and buy better stuff (yes you have to find it first which can be annoying but it’s not like you’d know where the shop was right away when you first enter a new place again in real life and again this is the middle ages signs didn’t exist you were expected to walk into a building and just know where you were by it’s contents)

Anyway that’s what I think is the true thing about Dragon’s Dogma is that it’s more like real life then a guided story book video game which can be good for some people who like more realistic things like that or it could be bad for those who want to have they’re hand held most of the way I personally think it’s a cool concept and worth the learning experience to try something new and grow from it rather then to just say that it sucks because I essentially don’t want to learn

(also I love the fact that, because it’s more realistic, that fire is FINALLY the most powerful element as it should be because burning hurts pretty much anything that is flesh and fur which is most of the monster community in video games I always hatted how fire would be the next to weakest element because either it was just built that way or something like cold was just more proficient because A they would just program it to have stronger damage period and B it would freeze if anything the freezing should be all it does and do little to no damage like it does in dogma and then use fire to cause even more damage because of the rapid change in temperature and then even MORE damage because most likely what your fighting is something weak to fire which is pretty much everything NOT LITERALLY EVERYTHING just pretty much everything that has fur scales or skin)

Red dead, bioshock, and prototype are all renowned for being amazing games. this is the shittiest game review ive ever read. seriously what games do you like? if you say halo then you should probably just hang yourself. not because halo is bad, but because theres alot of those ‘halo is the only good game ever’ guys. And they are retarded.

The game should probably actually suck before its said to though. Dont just hate a game becase it isnt exactly the same as another game you liked. This guy claims to have given it a chance, but clearly didnt, he disnt try to experiment or get better, he gave it one 6 hour go, and clearly if theres this many fans of the game, enough to outnumber the nay sayers, then obviously it does not “suck”

You strap blinders to an idiot then task him to play a game and this article would be the result. It’s amazing how much shit you intentionally miss or ignore, yet still possess the gall to declare how certain quests have nothing to do with the story when in fact they have absolute relevance.

Then again this ‘opinion piece’ just shows subtlety isn’t one of your strong points, let alone a point at all.

This post. Your are among the narrow minded person ive ever met, and yes, your opinion is wrong beacuse you dislike popular games, RDR and Bioshock are good games and if you cant accept this maybe Tiger Woods PGA golf tour ’12 is more your style. Is there enough action in that for you. This review is totaly biased. Your are a scrub and your status as editor needs to be revoked.

´´Even my most hated games like BioShock, Prototype, Red Dead Redemption´´…
Stopped reading from there.
Do you even know what you wrote there ?
Next you would be telling me that Final Fantasy VII or Resident Evil 2 are also some of you hated games, people have different tastes, but hating such games like Bioshock and RDR, doesn´t sound right at all…

In this ‘opinion piece’, some guy who doesn’t like these sort of games sucks at them and whines about sucking at them.

Seriously, I’m all for people having their personal preferences for games, but the only ‘personal preferences’ involved here are “I want a game that’s super easy and obvious”.

This game certainly isn’t perfect, I have my own issues with this game. However, Stretch….You just don’t seem to like games that will break you if you’re careless. Red Dead Redemption is great. So is Bioshock. Prototype 1 is a fun (but tough) game too. I haven’t played 2 yet (waiting for the PC release). The game is tough at times, but that just makes the successes all the more worthwhile (I felt great running around at night, getting ambushed by a chimera and surviving).

From what I gathered from your writing…

You had no idea RB(R1)/LB(L1) did anything at all. Of course the game would suck (as a mage in particular) if all you ever did was the non-skill attacks (the mage comes with Ingle [fireball] and Levin [lightning]). Not too far into the game the mage unlocks Comestion, a wall of friggen flame that knocks smaller enemies in the air and unsteadies larger ones often. It’s great for taking out a row of enemies, using them on bosses/minibosses (Griffons and Chimeras especially hate fire) often proves useful as well. Comestion is my go-to mage’s attack in dungeons and the like, since it’s casting time isn’t too much longer than high ingele (multi fireball blasts).

I never had much of a problem with Chimeras myself, they’re actually really weak with mages in particular. Spam Comestion a few times and they’ll die pretty fast. If you get the first strike there is a good chance they’ll never touch you. Griffons are actually the easiest for mages (or me at least) to kill of all the mini-bosses, save for the cyclops you can find a bit past the encampment that can be obliterated with a single Maelstrom attack (with plenty of remaining charge in the attack to spare).

Oh yeah, speaking of which. Maelstrom is a crazy useful crowd control magic skill for sorcerers (advanced magic class). Longest casting time (and leaves you vulnerable for a while after casting), but it sucks up any smaller enemies in the vicinity and knocks them around like rag dolls. I’ve yet to meet a bandit that can take a maelstrom and survive. Let alone HIGH Maelstrom which is bigger and stronger. It’s quite easy to take care of groups if you know where they are hanging out (Saurians by the river, bandits in camps and such, and the goblins by the mouth of the pass, etc).

Another awesome magic skill…Bolide. That’s meteors to you. It’s not very accurate, but there are multiple projectiles. It obliterates any weakling it hits near, and does a fair amount of damage (and often makes fall, or at least unsteadies) mini-boss level characters.

Yes, the game can be cheap (I’ve been one shotted by a bandit archer myself) and it sucks, but the game is supposed to be tough and you should know that going in. I also get tired of taking on the same groups of weaklings, though again maelstrom makes short work of those. Currently my arisen is a magic archer (previously a strider, and previously a sorcerer as mentioned).

I’ve written all this, and I seriously doubt it’ll make you consider changing your stance on this game. I just thought I’d try though.

This is a flawed game that definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, no doubt, but personally it has the most satisfying combat I’ve played in an RPG in a very long time and has some very cool, original ideas going for it that really outweigh the bad. If the game gets a sequel that fixes some of the quirks I’m going to a very, very happy gamer.

Please don’t judge the game on this terribly written, biased article. (don’t quit your day job, whoever wrote this) If you like RPGs like Demon/Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, and even The Elder Scrolls to an extent you’ll like this as it has aspects of all of those, particularly the first two. The more people that buy it the more likely we’ll get a sequel out of it, and frankly it deserves one.

And yeah, if you open your article as saying that you “hated games like BioShock, Prototype, Red Dead Redemption and Might and Magic: Dark Messiah” that’s going to automatically set a lot of people against you. Prototype and Dark Messiah, fine, but you actually HATED BioShock and RDR? Fair enough, your opinion is your opinion, and you’re entitled to it but they were pretty groundbreaking in a lot of ways.

Holy shit this is the most biased poorly written article i have ever read on a video game site in my fucking life.

You have awful taste in video games and its apparent that you dont enjoy fun but would rather complain when games dont hold your hand or impose even the slightest challenge. This a shit article and you should feel shitty for have written it.

I thought the combat system was the most exiting ive seen in an rpg, it requires more skill than than most games these days. I’ll admit i felt slightly overwhelmed at the beginning of the game but if you just put some effort into leveling you soon find the combat easy enough. i thought the graphics felt pretty bright and vibrant and even the story completely comes together after the post game. Personaly i thought it was an amazing game. just too short

I think the core issue here is how you’re playing the game and what you’re expecting of it. You complain about the combat when it’s actually some of the most engaging combat I’ve played in a game for a while. Each class has various abilities that not only effect enemies differently but can also be used to control enemies from killing you.

This isn’t a hack and slash, you actually have to think about what you’re doing and figure out how to take out the bigger enemies. And yes while the ‘trash mobs’ you kill between fighting the ‘boss mobs’ can be boring, the boss fights more than make up for it. They’re not only gorgeous but nicely designed in how you can combat them to where none of them fight the same. Go play the game another ~6ish hours and you’ll see what I mean.

To be frank though, I’m really not surprised of this review after looking at some of your previous thoughts on Dark Souls. If you want certain combat in a game then go play a game that gives it to you instead of criticizing other games that have something you prefer. You have these odd expectations of ‘realism’ in a game yet you contradict yourself on parts of gameplay you like that aren’t even ‘realistic’.

But honestly, getting upset because you basically go to areas where you’re obviously out-leveled by the monsters you run into and quitting the game over it is childish considering the very first enemy encounter you has shows a tool tip stating that if you’re getting killed you need to level up instead of being an idiot and running in like you can one shot higher level monsters.

In the case of all you Cravens who hate the game because you seriously do suck at it. It sucks to suck, life is going to be a hard and unforgiving bitch to you. DD RULES , fuck the rest of you. Dark souls is even sweeter

It sounds to me like you just suck at the game. If you pay attention, the story starts to come together and make sense as you go; it just takes a while. And the ending is REALLY good. That’s one main problem…you didnt play enough of the game. The only rpgs and really games in general that stand in the same ballpark as dds combat are the souls games. The voice acting is supposesd to be like it is, and its pretty decent. Graphics are a mixed bag. The backgrounds, vistas, etc. are really good, but characters are pretty damn bad, i agree. The quests are decent..pretty generic rpg quest for the most part, but ok. Barely any customization? seriously, lol. Theres just as much customization as any other rpg, and more in some respects. I agree, the game doesnt feel as “alive” as it should. The only thing i really HATE is all the running around; but the excellent combat, coupled with the loot you find makes it withstandable. Once again, i agree, enemies are really tough at first; but maybe if you played longer you would see that it actually gets easy when you hit about lvl20. Overall, it feels like it needs to be polished, but some of the stuff can be fixed with patches. Honestly, Im having WAYYY more fun with dd than i did with skyrim and any other recent rpg. In terms of fun, it on par with dark souls. If you wanna do numbers…a 8.5 IMO. Maybe you should give it a second chance.

I understand a few of you’re complaints, but only a few. To me Dragon’s Dogma has been I very exciting, and good escape from the hack and slash of Skyrim. (still a great game) You’re first mistake with the game Is picking a mage I think. With being a warrior, or even a strider, you get to climb on the enemies, and target weak points of the enemies. You chose the path of sitting in one spot while charging. (I’m sorry for you) But this isn’t even a good reason to get mad since once you get to the main town, you can change your class. Another thing is that the game explains the reason behind pawns, the dragon, and how you survive without your heart. (and why you should want it back) The last reason is because this is a game that doesn’t hold your hand. So if you just want to be babied through a game don’t pick this one up, but if you want a challenging game where you actually have to do work and like open-world rpgs I would recommend this game.

Agreed . I played about 10hrs and noticed that i just screwed with that game play. So i started all over, now i´m a lvl20 warrior with 15 hours(= 35hrs played) Im not bored nor think the game is getting dumb.The guy just didnt liked it. Maybe ben10 or some cartoon network game would make him fell more “inteligent” , or be less chalenging…
AAAAAAhhhhhhhhh!!!!! you suck!!!!!!!

wtf. WHO could dislike this game?
monotonous and “messy”… Im not sure what youre doing with your character but there is no messiness about this at all.
You sir, I agree dont belong playing a game like this. Perhaps skylanders or something is better…
if you got bored and couldnt find things to do.. clearly you were doing it all wrong.

You’ve been tainted by Biotard’s hand-holding, from the sounds of it. And you’ve certainly played nothing like enough of the game to offer something equating to a fair review. You’ve got at least ten to fifteen hours of gameplay/world introduction to finish with yet. Go back and play some more, and you’ll see why the game shines so much. And if you want instant gratification, you shouldn’t be playing Japanese titles in the first place.

Best RPG I’ve played in ten years, imo – back to roots, back to what made the genre what it is. Focused on building a party, tailoring your characters, beating back the bad guys, progressing the story, and fighting epic (and by epic, I mean truly epic – you wait till you see the end game) bosses. None of this, ‘which member of the cast do I get to bone first?’ or ‘time to reload and see the other choice, although it won’t make a difference in the end anyway, since they’ll retcon the story for the sequel’ rubbish that plagues the industry at the moment. Can’t wait for more from Capcom in this genre, although I’d much prefer they do a proper Monster Hunter RPG next time instead.

I’ve read your “article” and from the sounds of it this is just yet another case of “Haters gonna hate”, you’re always going to find fault with this game even thought it’s quite popluar, same goes with Bioshock and Red Dead Redemption, always in the video game society there’s one person who will hate something everyone likes and to be honest I really have no idea why it’s done, must be the attention seeking I guess.

Dragon’s Dogma is not Skyrim, lets make that perfectly clear, it is not now or was ever going to be a Skyrim contender, but what we must remember is Dragon’s Dogma is made by Capcom. Now as the company which has spent its time making Survival Horror and fighting games and is currently focusing its attention on making the next of their Resident Evil series I personally think they’ve made quite an achievement with Dragon’s Dogma.

Now as somebody has posted earlier the story of this game is not something you’ll pick up in the 6 hours you played it, but hey do you go to the cinema and watch a film and expect the story to come to you in the first few minutes? 6 hours in this game is little to nothing given its estimated to be a 24-48 hour game. The plot line takes its time to appear but once you understand it you’ll find it is quite enjoyable and amazing, and also quite defining from other RPG’s as the plot of Dragon’s Dogma does pull a few twists and turns that will surprise you.

In my final comments I guess I would say, if you don’t like something then fine, but don’t take to the internet on some slanderous campaign of popular video games trying to get people not to buy them because if you keep doing this you’ll just damage the industry as you’re persuading people not to buy the game.

Don’t even need to tell you you don’t play s$%# then right? Because if you think every game you just go head on on a mosnter, then don’t play it at all… Things like that don’t work on this game. Stop playing if you think like that and don’t make comments like this

you seem to be blaming the game for your short comings.
guessing you dont do rpg’s or you like them to hold your hand to begin with.
im agree this game has you running around everywhere asking questions but seriously what would you expect to do in a city/village?
and to say its unrealistic? and not to judge an emeny by size, armor and how many there is?
supose your ideal game would see you walking through masses of enemys blasting fireballs around and still survive.
if this game dont tick some boxes for you the may i humbley surgest a new vocation in life as i would recomend this as one of the games of the year.
its new ideas, fresh combat system and scope of free reign hasnt been seen since the final fantasy series.
it sounds like you messed up your charter creation and then tryed to run all the way through the game and finish in record time, im 10+ hours into the game an only just made it past the everfall. (pink tenticals)
you need to either put aside plenty of time to explore or this game will punish you.

???? Dude are being for real?? I just picked this game up yesterday and i cant stop thinking about it!! The whole rlrunnong around thing is a little unnerving but what do you expect when a game company vowed to never do tje fast travel thing. (Wotch i dont really care for) and dude, you seriously cant think like that about a game.. it seemed like you fotgot ITS A FUCKING VIDEO GAME!!!

hey tasteless author. im only gonna reply to your bullets cause its the most organized bullshit on this article.

The story is basically non-existent – your sense of exploration is non existent so you couldn’t uncover the story

Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced – you suck at gaming, and accustomed to waiting for dragons to crash land and start kicking its face til its nose bleeds *aherm* skyrim

Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight – you reeeeeally suck at gaming. hey even at reviewing!

There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour – like i said before your sense of exploration is non existent cause the game has a butt load that people try to farm.

The map is close to useless – you really really suck at gaming!

Traveling anywhere takes forever – what open world RPG didnt take forever. DD makes it easier once youve obtained the crystals, which makes you customize your teleport spots.

The Pawns may as well be robots – you didnt change their behaviors, thanks to your non existent sense of exploration.

I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health – what?! its not fucking zelda, and this game had a butt load of resources you just didnt mix em. again, due to your non existent sense of exploration.

The graphics are surprisingly bad – ok, invent something that can hold more than a blue ray disc then ill respect this opinion.

The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read – you need to see an ophthalmologist…

The voice acting is generic and annoying – wow you got this one right.wild guess? at times it was and but it rarely gets as annoying as your post.

Villages and towns look lifeless – eh? i dont know what you mean but everwhere you turned someone had something to say or a quest to give.

Enemies are monumentally durable – i dont know what you mean here exactly but if its an in insult to their monsters, you really dont have any taste in rpg’s.

Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any – DUE TO YOUR NON EXISTENT SENSE OF EXPLORATION

Hahahaha such a troll, whether it’s been done on purpose or not … I just couldn’t believe the title so I checked it out … then saw the games you hate and saw “red dead redemption” among them hahahahahaha … at that point the whole review was just disqualified in my opinion but since you managed to get me here using your shitty trick like the little attention whore you are, I can’t leave without rewarding you with another hater comment. Get lost !

–The story is basically non-existent
Sounds to me like you really gave it the chance it deserves! Frankly, I’m surprised at the detail you put into recounting the initial part of the game, seeing as it seems as if you were complaining before you even put the game in the console.

–Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced
Says the guy who chose to play a class that needs to stand there and “charge” every single attack. Climbing gigantic monsters as they thrash about wildly as you desperately try to stab their weak-points, cut at their tendons to knock them over, and clinging on for dear life as your stamina runs low trying to ground a Griffon that has taken you with it to the skies really seems pretty dull and infuriating to me. I think I’ll go enjoy the masterfully programmed and super interesting combat of Morrowind now.

–Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight
This game autosaves any time you enter the rift, walk into a new location, or sleep at an inn. This system is pretty much identical to just about any other RPG, barring perhaps Skyrim. It’s hardly worth mentioning, let alone criticizing.

–There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour
What kind of customization are you looking for, exactly? You have have both clothing and armor options for your chest and legs, along with equipment slots for your arms, head, and cloak. I’m failing to see what kind of customization you expected. Way of the Samurai 3? This comment is a joke.

–The map is close to useless
That’s probably because you found yourself incapable of hitting the start button, looking at your quests, and telling the game to show you on your map where your quest expected you to go.

–Traveling anywhere takes forever
This comment, in spite of your previous comment that the world is “too small.” If you follow roads, sprint, and don’t fight everything that jumps out of the bushes, it’s actually pretty fast to get to anywhere you need to be, given the shortcuts provided. Also– you can fast travel with rift-stones.

The Pawns may as well be robots
–Pawns pretty much are robots. That’s kind of the entire point. Pawns are in place so that you can teach them how to act and mold them to your liking. By the way, you clearly don’t realize that you can–from the beginning of this game–sit your pawn down and tell them to shut up if you find their chatter annoying. You like to complain about their useless advice, but if you were actually following their “useless” advice, you wouldn’t complain about enemies “taking too much damage.”

–I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health
This more or less summarizes what made you completely fail at this game.

–The graphics are surprisingly bad
They’re really not as terrible as people make them out to be. I find the scenery really nice. Textures could use some work– but if the graphics were great, you’d just be complaining that the game experiences too much slowdown.

–The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read
I recommend getting an eye exam and a good pair of glasses.

–The voice acting is generic and annoying
Welcome to the video game industry.

–Villages and towns look lifeless
Did you bother to explore them at all? Running across the rooftops of Gran Soren is some of the most fun I’ve had exploring an environment since Shadow of the Colossus.

–Enemies are monumentally durable
lol. I’ve never encounter a single enemy that is “monumentally durable.” You can one shot just about anything in this game using the correct skills, and nothing takes a whole lot of abuse if you use attacks its actually weak to. If your pawns tell you to hit a cyclops in the eyeball, stop shooting at his knees.

–Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any
Clearing out the holds, hunting the Griffon, and the Final Battle are all extremely exciting quests. Sure, some of them are lacking; however, I challenge you to name an RPG without its fair share of generic, boring fetch quests (fetch quests, by the way, are surprisingly few in this game, and most of them are extremely easy).

I actually find the Ur-Dragon monumetally durable in the beginning? I was what? 50 or something? and no, I wasn’t using the Assassin without pawns and at night hint… I wanted to try it like that… I I think that just it? The only monster that really was monumentally durable while I was on that lvl

Well all I can say to you is that you are a dumba$$….The game has an amazing story line, which opens up with every side and main quest. Its the only game around in which you can not predict the ending, the only game around which opens up even while you play it for the 6th time. SPOILER: Example i didn’t know Grigory (btw the red dragon) was an Arisen, but died in the battle with the maker, so he got turned into a dragon. Knowing this you start to understand why he wants you to come and kill him so you can finish what he started. It took me 3 games to realize that. END SPOILER Also each “main” character you meet Ex Quina, Medeline, Julian.. etc. Opens up the story more, even to the last ending…Not only that but after all that hard battles, long hours a field you finally kick the dragons butt.. SPOILER you think the game is over, but.. TADA it’s not you have more quests, harder enemies and an even better story line. END SPOILER. You sir or mam would not know a good game, even if it hits you on a face with a brick! Trust me coming from a person who thought Skyrim had a dry, predictable storyline and stopped playing at level 40 (beat the game and SH*T load of quests) vs Dragon’s dogma still playing and am level 150!

I finished my first play through of the game last night and I must say, that in my opinion I found that Grigori was in his own way a good guy, he was trying to help you and forge you into a much stronger person, strong enough so that you may be able to even take on a humongous Dragon (Grigori) and move onto to take the seat of God, Maker or Seneschal (Whichever you prefer).

Had to say something as the fanboys’re coming out of the woodwork here. I actually thought the game was good looking and had a decent idea going… although its basically pretty generic. I hate it when right out of the gate I’m bombarded with information and stupid training exercises that turn a basic idea into something needlessly complicated. Totally agree with almost everything you said. Most overrated game this year…can’t believe I wasted money on it. Trading it in tomorrow.
Spot on review, my friend.

Then go kill yourself idiot. Because just like this brain challeged fellow. You really suck at gaming. You really think that just because you go head on on a monster, it’s not going to see you? if you really think things are just given to you like that, then really give up playing games. Go kill yourself or something yeah?

Good one Kwon. If someone thinks differently about something, I think telling them to go kill themselves is a super effective approach. “I don’t like your opinion so go kill yourself or something yeah?” Mature dude…

For some reason… everything you say makes you sound brain-dead. Take the advice. Quit gaming, and stop these cries for help you call reviews.

You say “for some reason” like it’s some big mystery, but each point you made is actually blatantly apparent. You don’t even need a sense of exploration because this game DOES hold your hand. You obviously have trouble with anything remotely challenging. You say one thing, then contradict yourself in the very next sentence (a trait reserved for idiots.)

This game has it’s problems, that’s clearly evident. There ARE graphics issues, especially with lighting and dark colours. The pawns can be annoying–if you actually play the game long enough. The voice acting wasn’t flawless, but it was damn good compared to most games. I know that beating the ‘bosses’ requires a person to think, so I can understand why YOU had trouble with them.

The customization is nearly endless in so many different aspects. Tons of varied equipment, classes/skills, and character/pawn creation. The online pawn system was interesting, not perfect, but fun none-the-less. The game is lengthy, and nothing in recent memory can match the vast end-game. I probably died 5 times from the start of the game to the epic bonus boss in the endgame (but I’m not a dull child). Saving and difficulty was not an issue.

You call yourself a fantasy nerd, yet you can’t understand why you make a gift of the hydras head to the duke? It holds your hand and makes sure even the most autistic of kids can figure it out. It explains why the hydra was there. What do you think dragons do? Play the flute? They attack villages you fool.

Some day you might grow up, some day you might look back on this, and if you do I sincerely hope you hate yourself this steaming pile of stupid.

BTW I really have trouble believing you’re actually this dumb. I don’t know if you think you’re being funny. I don’t know if you think trolling makes you look smart. This is just so sad I don’t want to believe humanity has devolved so drastically.

Where this reviewer rages on the emptiness of DRAGON’S DOGMA, his review is no better. In fact, it’s worse. And I’m not a DRAGON’S DOGMA fan-boy… just a game player who likes to read actual game criticism rather than loaded hyperbole for sensation. The desperation in this review to be as pithy as Yatzhee in ZERO PUNCTUATION or as angry as ANGRY JOE is just tired. Now..

The second sentence of this review (“Dragon’s Dogma is the worst game I have ever played.”) could only be written by someone who hasn’t played many games. DRAGON’S DOGMA may not be a perfect game, but it’s far above average. To say it’s the “worst” you have played is ridiculous… again, unless you haven’t played many games. If that’s the fact, why should anyone read your game reviews?

And after reading your frustrating experiences playing DRAGON’S DOGMA, I can only surmise you aren’t very good at RPG’s… or possibly action games… and definitely games with a high difficulty (I would suggest you never play DEMON SOULS or DARK SOULS). I played through DRAGON’S DOGMA and experienced little to none of the frustrations you encountered. My pawns worked well in healing and attacking, I spent the time required to learn my skills and level my character, and fights with even the largest monsters became easy (in time). How did I do this? I played DRAGON’S DOGMA like the rpg it is… and not as an action game like GOD OF WAR. From reading your review, it’s obvious you didn’t care to play DRAGON’S DOGMA as it was intended. Instead, you played how you wanted and got continually got your a** handed to you. (fyi: sometimes its best to run from battles until you’ve leveled up!)

DRAGON’S DOGMA is a difficult game from “start.” It isn’t easy combat like GOD OF WAR or a hand-holding rpg for the masses like SKYRIM. It’s hard, it takes patience, and often it takes an ability to assess situations and determine to fight and possibly die… or flee and live to fight another day (pure action gamers don’t seem to like this aspect). In time, DRAGON’S DOGMA will surely be known as a standout, hardcore console rpg. The best? No. The worst? No. A good game? Yes.

Worth $50? If you like hardcore rpg and a real challenge, “yes.” If you want easily accessible, stay with fighting games or an rpg like SKYRIM, but stop whining and calling DRAGON’S DOGMA the “worst” because it’s hard, your weren’t very good at it, and you certainly didn’t have the patience for it. DARK SOULS is hard too, but it’s generally understood to be a great game… just not to everyone’s liking. That should have been your stance on DRAGON’S DOGMA my friend.

Actually I understand some of your reasons. First of all , I started has a mage like you and I was just so pissed off that it took forever to kill a bandit that i start again as a strider. Secondly , yeah travelling is long… But it’s part of the game. If we had fast travelling we wouldn’t fight often and our class level wouldn’t up alot. Anyway further in the game you can put portcrystal. Personally I think that the graphics are okay. And you say that the story is non-existent…Well actually you’ve not even finished the game… I’ve understand it at the very end. And of course the game sucks at level 15 and under. But then, once you start having gear , spells and challenge it becomes a really good game. Personnaly I recommended it to anyone. Got it since like 2 week and alerdy have about 50 hours played. Awesome game. See ya.

This review is atrocious and disgusting. I hope you trip on a flat floor and die a horrible death. This game does not deserve this lazy-ass review from you. It’s probably one of the best western RPGs i’ve played to date. Heck, i could even say that this is comparable to Skyrim (you’re probably gona bitch about Skyrim too because of the unexplored map, go play a baby game if you want so much hand holding).

Well, I never said it’s a review, and I still think your opinion of this game sucks. You’re not criticizing it. You’re labeling this game, even though you didn’t finish it yet. Grow up a little yeah? It’s frustrating to you, because you don’t know how to play. Simpla. As. That. Follow just a few of the advices here, and you’re going to find out how little you know of it, and RPGs in general. You should pay closer attention to what you expect of a game you need to think.

Ummmmmmmm not that I disagree with you but just to nit pick, your first two words are “This review”. But I actually like DD more than Skyrim as it doesn’t have the whole “you’ll never find any creatures above your level” hand holding. Just before you get angry.

Ok, I’ll be the only one to actually agree with you then. I really wanted to like this game. No, I wanted to love this game. I loved all the early screens, etc. that came out. I read some pretty bad press early on and maintained the “wait and see” attitude.

I played the demo and was really underwhelmed and disappointed. However, I figured you know what? This game is huge and it must be really hard to accurately portray something like this in a demo, so there I was on day 1 picking it up with a positive attitude.

Then I played it. Or, tried to play it. I honestly can’t spend more than 20 mins with this game at a time. It’s just so… not good. I don’t even know what it is specifically, the game just in general on the whole, sucks shit. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried forcing myself through boring sections, taking breaks from it, etc, etc. Nothing. I still think it sucks. What is all this stuff people are saying about “finding the story”? What? Finding the story? What does that even mean? There is essentially no story in this game. I don’t care if it apparently get’s good at the very end, I don’t have 35 hours to waste to get to that point. I don’t have 35 hours to waste to get more than a few shreds of story.

Was this review in depth? Fuck no. However, he said right off the top that he could only handle 6 hours of the game and NOT TO READ THIS AS A REVIEW.

Like we all sadi to him. You don’t understand RPGs in general. Because RPGs are not fell-from-the-sky thing where you don’t need to think to kill a monster and so on. You need think what’s the better way to kill this thing. And tell me 1 RPG you could understand from the beginning. Just one. Really, just one for me. And maybe, I’ll think about your $hitty opinion. And no, It doesn’t take you 35 hours to understand it. It really doesn’t take long, as I finished the main more or less of 4, to five days and didn’t play it for the whole day, or afternoon. Really don’t play RPGs if you don’t understand the type.

It doesn’t tell you anything off the bat, at least not specifically in comparison to this game. Sure we knew there were rebels, but not why they were rebelling. I didn’t know what the heck it means to Shout someone apart, why the dragon was apparently helping Ulfric escape in the beginning, why Talos was banned, what the Aldmeri Dominion was, and it took a long time for me to kill my first dragon and realize you can eat its soul and that’s why Dragonborns are important. It doesn’t tell you you have to kill dragons off the bat, either, that’s what you got from the back of the game/manual.

A lot of the details of the game are found in exploration or impatient meta-gaming. Same as Dragon’s Dogma. After all, you’re told off the bat that you have to kill the dragon in this too.

I understand many of the issues you address, but you have to understand the single concept of this game is grinding. Gaining Xp and leveling, nothing more. It does this brilliantly, with exchangeable pawns and a difficulty that makes you at many times want to slice of your own penis. yet you play on, ’cause of the superb challenge and gameplay. you grind and grind ’till you’re level 100 and experience in my opinion one of the greatest video game endings ever. After all that time, it’s not fair to say this game sucks, it simply follows it’s plan, very asian and therefore slightly weird to us. Yeah, DD2 better have story and some decent questlines and fast-traveling next to all that grinding, but I adored this game very much.

I just want to say that I’m also a gamer who’s very used to “handholding” and hack-and-slash games too, and just a few hours into this game I loved it. Sure, the gameplay was a little frustrating at first because I didn’t realize this was more than just button mashing, (and I still have trouble catching faster enemies) but the second I realized I could climb onto the larger enemies and chuck explosive barrels to kill the weaker ones instantly, the combat suddenly became very fun and immersive. (Heh–I threw a brick at an archer and took him down.)

I also will say that as far as graphics go, there’s a surprising amount of detail put into certain things. My sister was pleased at how this game actually goes into animating the movements of a ponytail, for example, which is usually ignored. I personally enjoyed how the character could be customized to such a great degree and they had actual expressions and fluidity in big cutscenes. Maybe I thought this game was so much better graphics wise in comparison to Skyrim or DA: Origins rather than a more modern, linear game or something but I wouldn’t say they’re even remotely close to terrible. I liked the parts where you’re walking through a dark area with a lantern and there’s the dramatic lighting and tension in each battle.

Um, for those of you who can’t get the story, the premise you were supposed to work with was pretty apparent to me…You play as the previous Arisen in the prologue. The dragon calls you Arisen. He mentions an endless chain in the prologue, so I figured there’s a Chosen One every couple of lifetimes to stop the dragon, standard RPG stuff with room for development as you go further in the game. The loading screen shows a stylized dragon eating a heart, so I figure that’s part of the legend. The chief FLAT OUT tells Quina what was done to you was likely a curse of the dragon. I don’t get what was so confusing to you, especially with all the other miscellaneous things around to explain more. And you’re not necessarily fighting the dragon to get your heart, you’re fighting the dragon because HE’S ACKNOWLEDGED AS AN ULTIMATE EVIL. Your character is, presumably, aware of the Arisen legend–and the Duke was calling for soldiers anyway.

And the Pawns being robots? For one thing, they actually do comment on the situations you find yourself in, and their participation in your quests makes them actually less robotic than the Skyrim companions. They’re one of the smartest allies I’ve had in a game, especially because the hints they give are actually useful to an inexperienced gamer and quest taker(even if repeated often, and note that saying your enemy is too strong is a hint that they’re a higher level than you, not just random chatter)and they will obey your orders unless other circumstances are preventing them.

Honestly, this “gaming journal” is so utterly dramatic and over-exaggerated (to the point of being untrue) that you lose all credibility with any RPGer that ever played DD. If you don’t like traditional fantasy RPGs, don’t play them or at least keep in perspective that a lot of people like this game and you’re going to offend them when you say it’s crap.

That right there made me laugh my ass off, I did that to a seagull with a rock once cause they are to damn fast for me to hit with a sword, but you have no idea how hard I laughed as my friend on the TV next to me got pissed off cause he couldn’t catch the damn seagulls either or hit them with a rock even. (This is game start with the fighter I might add)

You must be a real prick for every goddamn thing to have to making sense. It’s called “play the story and gradually find the answers”. Also you needs to learn how to play a game before complaining about the combat. Yeah, enemies have a lot of health, but if you were even just a little competent, you would have figured out how to properly play your class. Like seriously, you are a moron and need to be shot off into space because your stupidity is a danger to yourself, others, and more importantly, to the reputation of an amazing game.

Well, as has been said before me, this game is just not for you. This article was horrible in my opinion because you basically just bitched about a bunch of stuff you should’ve known going into the game.

Also, the first camp you ventured to where you fight the cyclops and the SECOND camp with the hydra? They are the same camp…so I don’t know where you ran in between haha.

killing the chimera was well hard the combat is shit. i prefer skyrim. its got better combat. i can tank a dragon with my humanoid character by pressing one button while i turn away from the screen to eat cake and drink my tea. f this with its enemies with more hp than me and not dying in 2 button presses.

Well to the person that wrote this review, just want to say that some games are meant for people that understand them, obviously you didnt get the essence of the game and how huge it is the fact that you can continue to edit your characters even after starting the game (that is something that i really wanted in a game of this kind) Despite this, your overall opinion of the game is misguided by the simple fact that if you are a person that likes Call of duty (which it seems you are) you shouldn’t even be playing this kind of games, if I grab a game of a genre that I don’t like chances are I wont like it, and here you are complaining about the game being “hard” even though you only played 6 hours of it, if you would have played it as it is meant to be you would realize that most of the supposed “flaws” are there on purpose and are things that you can mend or work on as you progress (like teleporting, I am able to teleport to around 8 different locations, which if strategically put, leave you near to almost anywhere), and in Dragons Dogma the point is “how” you get to point A to point B not so much the destination itself; so please, leave this kind of games for the people that is meant to be for, or in the words of Bob Dylan: “do not criticize what you can´t understand”

Lol
i quote you on the first line:
“Even my most hated of games like BioShock, Prototype, Red Dead Redemption and Might and Magic: Dark Messiah at least have some semblance of charm and character.”
Dude u suck,if you dont like these games thatn ur just an ignorant prick,go play fifa or some sportìs shit like that,because i bet that those are your favorites.

well , i dont know what you have done in that game but it was completely wrong , true the game is hard and frustrating , i even wanted to stop because the ogres in that one cave killed me , but to kill huge enemies you need the right tactics to kill then the enemies are hard but it depends what class you use , for example with the fighter , warrior ore myst knight its hard for me kill these flying harpies ,what i try to say is each class has theire weaknes , so if you suck with the mage then pik another class , and true the story is hard to understand but do the main missions and you will understand it stepp by stepp , and then another , for me the game sucks alittle because the enemies don’t get stronger only in different section and after you beat grigori , but now i am lvl 150 and they are no challenge to me anymore so the only point where the game sucks i when you reach lvl 100 and not before , and one thing more this game is a rpg survivor adventure game , like dark souls but easier

sorry did not finished and sorry for my bad english _ so if you are someone who want to be a badass in the games then buy games like call of duty ore god of war , because to become strong you cannot sa ” i am gonna to be strong ” you have to wok on it ,so do with the game what ever you want to do , but dont make such a bad game review of a game wich genre you don’t even like to play and sorry for my bad english again

Eh… I’m not going to read through all 159 comments, but the few I’ve read seem to agree with my view on the game. I’ll go by topics here:

– The character you’re playing as at the start is NOT your character. If you had played the game enough, you’d know that your character is not the first Arisen to ever exist, and in fact, you do meet the previous one early on.
– The first chimera battle, in case you haven’t noticed, is a boss battle. And since bosses’ HP bars are properly displayed, along with you being able to kill parts of the chimera and seeing it getting increasingly blood-drenched throughout the battle, I’d say you’d have to be asleep to think you weren’t dealing any damage. As for dealing magic damage, I’m pretty sure one of the mages could enchant your weapons… And as for your companions dying repeatedly there, then I’m sorry to say, but maybe this isn’t the game for you… More on this later.
– Tell me of an RPG where you don’t run around talking to people, and I’ll show you a quest-less RPG wannabe. RPGs are all about taking quests (can’t really avoid fetch quests, there) and leveling up. Why is this even a reason to complain when it’s to be expected of the genre? And good job not checking gates right away to see if you can go through or not… So far, you’re just making a fool of yourself with this review…
– There’s more to the pawns as you think. Many people actually reveal that they despise pawns’ very existence, and they’re not even allowed into Gran Soren’s castle, as you should know if you had played for at least a couple of hours. So you either didn’t play much, or you weren’t paying attention. Those are both requirements to make a proper review… Oh, wait, you only realized that you gained the title of “Arisen” by the time you’ve reached the encampment? Oh, boy……
– Your description of combat is worrying, to say the least… How can it take you some 30 spells to take out a bandit when my sorceress pawn, at level 35, could kill them in one or two spells (and she can take a LOT more punishment than “one arrow”), and I, myself, only needed 4 or 5 dagger slashes to kill one of them at that same level? Again, it looks like you’re just awful at this game…

Looks like the rest of your “review” is just rambling about finding no connections to the story through the quests, and your inability to buy new equipment and improve your spells and passive abilities… You, sir, just suck at the game, weren’t paying attention from the start, and have no place in writing such an ill-informed review.

you obviously have no idea what you’re meant to do in this game… the story at the start was 100% epic and engaging… its obvious the guy is heroic because the dragon is the size of a fuckin castle in so-called “skyrim”

“Half of my team, including me, use magic, while another uses a healing spell.”

Only 2 out of 4 of my team were mages. Also, combat isn’t the only thing about DD that’s terrible. Even if I had 4 mages in my team, we can all still get taken down by 1 wolf. The combat isn’t difficult. It’s inconsistent and weirdly confusing. There is no reason why a single human enemy can withstand 40+ fireballs that engulf their entire body.

That kind of thing doesn’t just apply to DD, it applies to all games like this. The fire represents an attack being made that may or may not be more effective on what kind of enemy you’re fighting, it doesn’t mean you’re actually going to get results like you would in real life–fireballs are mainly attacks at all because of the kinetic energy and chance to set the opponent on fire, anyway, it’s not likely to be instant kill even in real life if the enemy is wearing nonflammable stuff. Plus, of course human enemies are insanely strong at first–they have more experience at fighting than you at the point you’re at and they’re wearing armor.

And obviously having all mages will make you extremely vulnerable because you can’t get good armor as a mage, as well as your earlier complaint about slow casting time. You need someone who can move about more to protect the mage while they’re casting (I usually only have one mage.)

I never found anything ‘inconsistent’ with the combat system, even if there might be parts of it you don’t like.

The first 20 minutes is ingenious, with the plane crash, pearl necklace and suitcases sinking, the sinking plane, the ovalisk, “No Gods or KIngs, only Men” sign….and then suddenly your buying ammo from racist mexican vending machines, respawning 12 feet away if you die and eventually taking polaroid pictures of splicers for some weak ass “research” reason.

If somebody who never played BioShock loaded a save game after the protagonist injects himself with a random hypodermic needle for absolutely no justifiable reason they would think it’s dumb too.

I do agree with some points but those points are exaggerated.To me graphics can be better with more props in scenery as such but thats just me comparing it to skyrim graphics slightly. Other than that graphics are up to standard and they feature near pitch black effects when nightfall and you actually have to be wary about your surroundings. What RPG does that??skyrim sure didn’t.

Combat can be irritating when you are faced with near impossible odds at times and that’s when you should RUN. And its nothing close to boring. Nothing close. Boy i even got bored with skyrim’s fight mechanics but DD never.

Traveling takes forever but thats the point! I would say be what the hell the objective is so far away but thats how it is. Traveling takes patience. and there are shortcuts to traveling such as a ferrystone that teleports you to base

This is what i conclude based on your review

1. You are bad at the game
2. You cant play RPG
3. You have no patience for a RPG
4. You can’t adapt to an RPG

True RPG players would love it and you are not one of them.If you hated, DD as an RPG, dont play RPG, dont ever comment about RPG game.Seriously for your sake,DON’T.

this guy has got to be the most negative nancy to ever review a game. even more so than the guy from zero punctuation. it seems like he started playing the game determined to find every little nit picky thing he could wrong with it while covering up all the great things about the game with a blanket, lest anyone find holes in his argument. well sir, i see the holes. not only do i see holes i see a grand canyon’s worth of great game play and fun to be had in this game, and that is only with the first play through. im sure it gets even better when you get to experience it all over again with another class. i started as a strider, loving it, and im already looking forward to playing it through again as either a sorcerer or fighter type after i finish the game.

i have put about 40 hours into the game at this point give or take and ive enjoyed almost all of it. tons more than ive enjoyed skyrim as many other people on this post have stated. skyrim is a great game but at lvl 44 ive become so powerful that even 2 blood dragons at one time werent an issue to kill. i am a walking god in the world of skyrim. in dragon’s dogma however i really love that im lvl 27 and i can still get my ass handed to me by one of the mega bosses by just picking the wrong time to jump from one place to the other and get smashed by a cyclops club. i havent even gotten to fight a gryphon yet, but man am i looking forward to it. the things that make this game great are the same things that made shadows of the colossus great, gigantic monsters that i literally have to climb on top of to kill. SotC has never gotten old to me, i still play through it on occasion now that its on PS3 in 1080p. i can only imagine that dragon’s dogma will now be one of those titles that stays in my games collection for an indefinite amount of time.

in conclusion, to the author of this article, you should think about finding a different line of work, because it is apparent to me that you dont enjoy your job and that you are also terrible at it. good day.

only BIG negative WAS autosave/saving (tossed the god damn skull for that little gr.. girl and jail, missed quest) afterwards i read that restore latest checkpoint would have helped :] why WAS? hell, game has NG+ so i dont to need to restart all for that o/ (not many rpg has NG+)

ps. was awesome to RUN straight in beginning through ancient quarry , there to either blue tower or soulflayer canyon to get superior loot for beginning ;] (gotta admit i little drooled when i got so many awesome stuff)

pps. its sad to see that even 10 years old beats this game and you blame game :]

How’s it feel reading all these negative comments Stretch? Theres not much I can say that hasn’t already been said so I’ll just make this short and say stop reviewing or even giving your opinion on games you clearly suck at. Go play something mindlessly easy like Skyrim on the easiest difficulty or maybe some cartoony trash.

Lol I find it funny how guys like this who just suck so badly at these games start complaining about it. I mean he doesn’t even like Bioshock or Prototype.. Seriously lol. Always a few morons who think they can ‘criticize’ a game because they can’t handle it.

Oh boy… Here’s another of those guys who sucks at videogames and has to make up flaws to justify his lame skills… But what pisses me off the most is that other people will take your word on it and believe that whatever game you sucked at is just bad.

And since you went through the trouble of making a list at the end, I’ll be reviewing it. *Sigh* Here goes nothing…

– “The story is basically non-existent”
Let’s see… We’ve got the gargantuan dragon that took the heart of a commoner (you) in Cassardis to turn him into an Arisen, there’s the otherworldly Pawns, the “dragon slayer” Duke of Gran Soren, a cult that worships the Dragon and wants him to bring about the destruction of the world-as-we-know-it, a mysterious witch and a “dragonforged”, and the Seneschal tying everything together and providing a monumental plot twist and exposition that changes everything you thought you knew (which I will not spoil). No story, or none that you could understand…?

– “Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced”
Dull? Tell that to that guy climbing the giant monster to stab its head, while the monster flails around to shake him off. Or to that group running through the woods looking for the talismans that power the Metal Golem that’s chasing them. Or to the poor saurian who not only got his tail cut off, but while he was trying to flee, he ran into a fighter who impaled him with his sword, twisted the blade three times (effectively destroying his internal organs), and then kicked his mangled corpse 5 feet away. Or to everyone who fought any dragon-type enemy (not necessarily the “Big One”).
Infuriating? Sure, it’s hard at first, but nowhere near as hard as you state. Sounds like you were having far more trouble than you were supposed to. Maybe you should play Dark Souls for something ACTUALLY infuriating.

– “Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight”
….Ummm… “Save spots”…? Pause the game, press Select (on the PS3), and confirm…? Seriously, dude, it says so right there in the bottom of the screen when you pause… The only time when you cannot save is in the middle of combat… What are you, high?

– “There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour”
There’s 156 weapons, 27 shields, 62 helmets, 62 different torso armor, 38 torso clothing, 7 outfits, 48 arm armor, 60 leg armor, 31 leg clothing, and 54 accessories (including capes and jewelry). This is without DLC. Each of those, except jewelry, can be upgraded up to 3 times in stores (using money and materials), and once more while fighting dragons, which makes for around 2000 different items (including stat changes). The amount of possible combinations you can make with those accounts for several million.
How much more do you need?

– “The map is close to useless”
I find the map to be VERY useful when trying to go anywhere, and easy to read. It’s a large world, so going around without a map, especially at night, is crazy. Obviously, when you start, nothing on the map is explored, aside from what your character knows. But this is the same in 90% of RPGs out there, and even RTS games have “fog of war”. By the time you finish the game, you’ll have most of it explored, which makes later travels (and NG+) much, much easier.
I’d say that you’re the one who can’t read maps.

– “Traveling anywhere takes forever”
That’s why there’s Ferrystones and Portcrystals (reuseable teleport “destinations” that you go to using Ferrystones, and which you can place anywhere at your leisure). You get your first Portcrystal for free at the Bluemoon Tower. Right now, I have 6 different locations to which I can freely teleport to (thanks to my large supply of Ferrystones), and that’s all I really need.
But of course, you didn’t know that…

– “The Pawns may as well be robots”
…Yeah, that’s the whole point… They’re supposed to be emotionless, and with next to no knowledge about the world at first… To further show that point, they even ask you what emotions they should display in various situation, when you give ’em advice in camps/inns (where you can customize their “personality”). Were you paying attention at all?

– “I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health”
You’re going to be sorry when you need to upgrade your weapons, finish board quests, sell stuff to make money, or keep your stamina reserves high on battles against stronger enemies who may or may not force you to run to escape their larger attacks.
…Oh, wait, this is obviously useless knowledge for you, since you can’t even kill a snotty bandit…

– “The graphics are surprisingly bad”
Waaaay exaggerated. Are you one of those guys who thinks that a game can never be good if it doesn’t use up-to-date graphics?

– “The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read”
You need glasses, my friend. I’m nearsighted and I can read just fine. That’s worrying.

– “The voice acting is generic and annoying”
Welcome to the videogame industry? Some voice actors are better than others, and this applies to all games. Some of the actors in Dragon’s Dogma actually do a pretty good job, if you ask me.
And guess what, Pawns are supposed to sound emotionless, so I hope you’re not expecting Rook to be an amazing public speaker.

– “Villages and towns look lifeless”
Seeing that all NPCs have their own daily routines and can be found walking around and stopping in different places at different times, I’ll further insist that you need glasses.

– “Enemies are monumentally durable”
No, grasshopper, you won’t deal any damage to a bandit that’s blocking your attacks with his shield. Bandits are stronger than lowly goblins at first, true, but I expect humans to be smarter, better protected, and trained, and actually put up a fight. They can still be killed rather quickly. Where did you get that +30 fireballs nonsense from? You either didn’t upgrade your equipment, or you’re attacking a blocking enemy, or you just suck.

– “Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any”
Slaying a gargantuan dragon and getting rid of a crazed band of cultists that worship the dragon doesn’t sound like a boring main objective to me.
Neither does stopping a rebellion, hunting griffins, helping soldiers retake control of an overrun fortress, and on at least 3 occasions, slay some giant monster attacking a human settlement. And I’m just scratching the surface here.

“Even my most hated of games like BioShock, Prototype, Red Dead Redemption and Might and Magic: Dark Messiah at least have some semblance of charm and character.”

First rule of any that anyone with any journalistic know-how should know-never lose your reader in the first two lines. They may be your opinions, and you’re welcome to them, but I’m afraid you lost me after that statement.

Hey. I’m writing this as a reply to the blog, not you, because I can’t seem to find a damn comment button. Pretty sad hey? I sort of just assumed I needed to be signed in to do so. Anyways, in no relation to your post and following a normal comment:
Where the hell do your standards lie? I get that the story is somewhat lacking during the beginning, but if you played through it to the end it actually gets very interesting. So I can sort of understand where you’re coming from there. But your complaints about the fighting is baffling. You get tonnes of skills options and even some combos. Most games give you one button to press repeatedly and are done with it. And even more games only offer you a gun..Pew Pew. I really don’t see what your problem with the fighting is there.
The map is useful if you can actually read one..I had no troubles. And yes you do have to trudge a long ways, though a ferrystone can aid you in travelling back and later on you get port stones. So just bear through it. It’s not the worst thing ever.
The pawns are computers. So yeah “Robots”..What did you want? Also you don’t HAVE to travel with anyone, to correct you on that. You don’t need extra pawns and if your main pawn dies, which you can allow fairly easy, just don’t recover it from the rift stone. There, problem solved.
Only picking up curatives isn’t wise either because materials allow you to enhance your equipment..so you finding no need in picking that up is sort of foolish.
I don’t know why you’re complaining about the graphics, what the heck are you comparing them to? I can’t imagine you ever having any older systems either to be so spoiled. They’re not exactly SPARKLING like soul calibur games and what have you, if that’s what you want. Aside from not sparkling, they’re pretty much up to date in my opinion.
As for text, get glasses or a bigger t.v. Technically I NEED glasses and I could read it with ease.
With the voice acting. I agree with you there. Though a bit differently..They butcher and overdo the whole Medieval speak way too much. But I dealt with it just fine.
Also you complaining about the monsters being durable and having a lot of health..It’s for a challenge. If you want something super easy where you can three-shot every monster go look for something a little more colourful and age appropriate for your level of gaming.
Anyways, you seem generally spoiled to me and impossible to please. Your argument is almost entirely invalid and your complaints are down to your own impossible standards.

dude you have no idea what your talking about! it seems like your just bashing a game because you fucking suck at it, when I first started the chimera wasn’t hard at all in fact it only took me about 5-10 minutes to kill (which in my opinion is not too long because most games larger enemies are too easy to kill), and the goat head isnt useless, the goat head is what allows the chimera to cast its spells. next time you try to critique a game at least pay attention to detail so you dont sound like a moron when you post your “game journal” online.

I’m sorry but I couldn’t even finish this “review”, my eyes were about to roll out of my head. I basically got this from what I read. You basically wanted the entire story told to you IMMEDIATELY, and I’ll bet you were rushing and were probably still only a level or two above the startin’ level. It only took me about an hour to meet the bandits, and while they were hard they weren’t even close to 1 hit kill hard, or so hard that my entire band could only fight ’em one at a time.

This game is not lacking in combat at all. It is fun to play and bosses are fun to kill. It is actually one of the few ORPG’s where it actually requires some skill to beat certain enemies and where bosses really are bosses and not some weak ass shit. The combo’s and skills that you can aquire are good and after some time playing the game I would even say tat it gets to easy for my taste. Would have been fun if they added a hard difficulty for those who mastered the game or obtained higher level. If the game is to hard for you stop rushing off to high level enemies and put the difficulty on easy you moron >.>.

I love it. You complain about travel taking too long, yet you mock the high running speed of your character. You complain about the ox cart being too slow when you were too dull to find out for yourself that you can make it move faster. You complain about there being no story because it isn’t force fed to you one cut scene at a time in plain English that a child could understand. You complain about combat being too difficult and then gripe about the hydra not using all of its attacks in the very beginning of the game. Even if I didn’t know what this game was, all I would get from reading this article is that you’re some kind of ennui striken sap who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The running speed LOOKS ridiculous, but the size of the map makes the amount of ground it can cover useless.

I DID make it go faster, and the problem is that my FOOT did more damage to an Ox than a fireball did to a person, which is absurd.

There’s no story because it just drops off the radar after a few hours. You’re joining a group to hunt down a dragon, and then you just do a bunch of random tangential quests that have nothing to do with anything.

The combat isn’t difficult, at least not traiditonally. The enemies have obnoxious amounts of health, they are all faster than me, and I die in one hit. That’s not ‘challenge’ that’s unfair. I have NO way of defending myself, including running. That is just bad game design. And what does the Hydra not attacking have to do with difficulty. My problem isn’t that it’s not hurting me, it’s that it wasn’t even trying to. Also, the manticore is the creature that’s at the very beginning of the game.

I agree that the story sucked, but much of your complaints simply show a complete lack; of both comprehension skills, and imagination.

As for the combat, the combat was great and it was challenging; it’s not the games fault you didn’t understand it…

“The running speed LOOKS ridiculous, but the size of the map makes the amount of ground it can cover useless.”—– Fighting gigantic monsters with a pair of knives doesn’t??? Dude, first off it’s fantasy (as in not supposed to be realistic), secondly this isn’t Earth; what makes you so sure these humans are subject to the same physical limitations we are???

Humans, are unnaturally weak and slow; there are plenty of animals with smaller muscles than us, yet are still practically twice as strong.

Anywyas, you complain about combat, but don’t change your class? I question whether or not you even realized, that you could learn new skills or even whether you realized that spells don’t heal your bar completely (hense your 1 hit ko statement, which no one else seems to have had a problem with).

like they said it isnt force fed to you if you search for the story youll find thats its very deep and not finished but very deep anyone who played this and not a fan of berserk wont really care as much but like i said if you want the story play the game to the max its not some story book your mommy reads you at night.

Go play shitty click feast Guild wars 2 (with much crappier story), that game is actually boring!! the combat in Dragon’s Dogma is much better than skyrim’s and those click combat roleplaying games aka: MMORPGs.

Dark Souls, Dragon’s Dogma, Kingdoms of Amalur, Fable III, Monster Hunter, and Skyrim have all been enjoyable playing experiences. And Guild Wars 2 being an MMO, bit different genre. I’m not gonna bullshit myself and pull some fanboi-shit to say one is better than the other.

Go back and play Guild Wars 2 without your mouse and quit targeting enemies to attack them. G’damn. And if you’re not a story-driven person, maybe you shouldn’t be playing story-driven content. P.S. I’m not returning to this board to read your reply.

Okay, firstly, i never bought this game after reading your review, i borrowed it off a friend thought and thought, it might be bad, but i didn’t pay for it, firstly, i thought, the worst, then i fight the chimaera, killed it quickly thought, maybe he wasn’t very good with that class, so i decided to choose a strider when it allowed me to, so i chose the smallest possible and decided to try it, killed the things in 1-2 slashes, nuked the hydras head in seconds, so far, level 30, and i just think you personally were rather bad at the game, the ONLY problem i have is the camera angles at times, i was finding the monsters a little easy, i decided to attack some dragon during an escort quest at level 15 and got stomped on, tried again with a large supply of food and some nice pawns, and ended up destroying the dragon by tearing off 1 health bar at a time, and i actually enjoyed to see a challenge, now, without complaint, i think you should stick to games that are idiot proof, sorry, (would like to add that i have NEVER been 1 hit and the quests don’t require much running around) thanks.
No, i don’t find this game too easy, dark souls wasn’t too hard as melee, warcraft was easy enough, skyrim was a bit slow to begin, but glad i played it, Guild wars had lush graphics but not something i could play 24/7, if you hated the game that much, maybe you have problems, you seemed to throw so much hate at this game and crying over your review, its rather amusing to read and i assume your review was a joke, if not, yea, to each their own i guess, but I’m glad i tried the game, also, soundtrack was relaxing and u can mute the pawns by training them, so many things u said, so much i could rant about, but im gonna get a massive bowl of coco pops and EAT IT while watching how i met your mother, /bow

Hello Stretch .. I read what you had to say and felt the need to comment.I just began playing this title a few days ago .. I play a few different games every day. Currently I am lvl 14 .. I have not died even once, neither have any of my pawns .. of which I took the time to get pawns that would be of the most use to myself and in a party setting. I went to google and researched the parts of the game I didn’t quite understand fully .. like inclinations.
I also play Fable 2 and 3, Skyrim, Borderlands 1 and 2 and Dishonoured to name a few. I excel at each and every one of them because I put the effort in .. I don’t want a game to hand me anything easily, I want to fight for it.
I completely disagree with almost everything you said about the game .. I think you should be ashamed of posting this .. maybe get games that allow you to be in God Mode .. perhaps then you would enjoy it.
Oh ya .. by the way .. I am 45 year old disabled mother of two girls who bought my first xbox 360 only a couple months ago ..

Whatever it is you look for in games you have a horrible taste and I feel very sorry for you. I’ll admit this game has problems but you knit pick at the stupidest and most obvious shit. It seems like you went into this game mad to begin with.

if you played through the game or even read intro text on screen the prologue actually makes sense.

skills you start out extremely weak with a rusted weapon
what do you expect
the skills later on are very impressive and weapons while not being much more then stat sticks with enchantments spice things up nicely.

monsters health is related to challenge sorry you dont like a challenge bandits have Armour which mitigates damage.

also until you get to the city after escorting the hydra head, is just the intro.

your entitled to your opinion as long as you make it clear as it is you sir fail.

ok, ok, we all get it that you have a fairly large “distaste” for Dragon’s Dogma, but anyone to read this post of your complaints are going to say whats on they’re minds of course, which equal more haters to you, and beginning as a mage at first swing is not that bad, ( infidant healing basically ) plus you can change your vocation to something else when you hit Gran Soren, I waited until I got my vocation to nine, before I became a sorcerer, bad-ass spells too, most effective is high-bolide, high-malestrum ( against bandits and stuff ), and high-gizel ( ecspecially against drakes ).

Playing as a mage/sorcerer here and not really seeing these problems you’re talking about. Maybe you should just take the game slower. The best part about it is slowly trekking through the countryside with your ‘fellowship’. And that route seems to have leveled my skills sufficiently so that I not only never got 1HKO’d but I can take on Drakes at level 27 (of course, starting the fight with High Glicel swings things in my favor).

In the end, people need to learn that a game’s individual components are meaningless compared to how it will make you feel if you’re not just rushing through it to pop out a review.

Dragons dogmas combat is not difficult stretch your just a dumb ass. If you want a real difficult game why don’t you play dark souls that makes the combat in dragons dogma like a fucking skyrims combat.

Sorry my friend but there are to many things that you doesnt know about the game, like the mage itself its a suppor character not a battle one, for magic battles there is a wizard, if you wanted to fight u could use the strider or fighter ¬¬.

An interesting read is worth commenting. I think that you should write more on this issue, it might not be a taboo subject but generally people are not enough to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers

Agree:
* Arisen looks and acts like a mute retard (let me blink and open my mouth and not do anything, yeah that’s the way)
* Story could be much better. I felt the same when the dragon ate the heart.
* Pawn’s conversations can be annoying, but most everyone says that and I’ve learned to tune them out. To my own detriment sometimes yes, but oh well. Would be nice if there was some sort of slavery backstory instead of “Ooh Arisen, we’d love to do everything you tell us”.

Disagree:
* Combat is super fun awesome. Don’t like a mage? Try a fighter or strider, you might have more fun. I don’t understand why you complained about being a certain class and DID NOT CHANGE THAT CLASS even though you knew full well you could!
* You can save anywhere. Don’t be a dumbass.
* Customisation: You can enhance armour and weapons. Not full customisation I know, but better than nothing
* “I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health” sigh…you have stamina that needs replenishing during the monster fights, and you need items to do enhancements and combine to make more interesting things.
* “Enemies are monumentally durable” is very much explained by “Half of my team, including me, use magic, while another uses a healing spell.” One just for healing? And you have just one fighter/strider? …..

I understand where you’re coming from with regards to the story but it really looks like that a large part of the reason that you don’t like the game is because, well, you don’t understand or know how to play it. And that’s not the game’s fault.

Look, maybe I’m not a professional game reviewer, only a few of your complaints were actually valid ones.

The beginning, while confusing or ‘dull’ as it might’ve been; the point of the game is to overcome large and terrifying creatures. If you had done professional work in reviewing this, you’d obviously know this was developed by the same teams that created the titles ‘Monster Hunter’ and ‘Lost Planet.’

These games, mainly this one, were designed to test your patience, reflexes and wit. In the end the grueling experience pays off, and monsters are easily sliced from nape to chop after a certain period in the game.

The story line is obviously the classic ‘go slay the dragon and save the world’ concept, but you seem to fail in realizing there are romance and other various story-arcs. Not EVERY single thing in the game must relate to YOUR quest; other people exist and they have their own problems to deal with. Look into this experience as reading a historical textbook. Each country, and every person in it is dealing with something and aren’t focusing on some singular great cause.

The climbing and mounted combat animations are a bit choppy, but this is to allow free combat maneuvering. This isn’t a game like ‘God of War’ or ‘Castlevania: Lords of Shadow’ where every big thing you kill HAS to have simple button cutscenes just to make the kill a beautiful one. This game also doesn’t want to hand over rewards and dole out victories, it makes you EARN them.

Capcom should’ve given the name away seemings they have a habit of making games themed with ‘overcome the impossible odds’ shtick.

As for running, it varies depending on your weight and how much you’re carrying. While their is no logical explanation for why the character moves so quickly, there’s also no explaining why monsters are existant along with the fact you’re living without a heart. It’s a fantasy game, look into the genre. Other games have mechanics where you get blasted to shreds and you simply ‘fall down’ or hide behind a corner so your wounds heal within seconds. I think complaining about ludicrous running speed is a bit overcritical and whiney for someone who thinks the world he’s traversing is too expansive for foot.

To continue talk of travel, you eventually unlock the ability to uncover and purchase PORTCRYSTALS which can be placed just about anywhere in the world at your leisure. You then obtain ferrystones and use them to travel back and forth between these crystals so that travel needn’t be so tiresome. This game did not leave many details out, you simply spent six hours bitching and whining about a game that requires multiple playthroughs and ACTUAL gameplay to uncover all of it’s features. It’s offering your money’s worth.

As far as pawn’s talking too much, that can be adjusted as well as their level of usefulness. Did you just overlook the fact they have commands on the directional pad? While they become repetitive, they’re good for spotting things that you might happen to forget.

As for complaining about your journey becoming impersonal, just toss your pawn off a cliff or don’t hire extras. You can play the game alone and their are augments and abilities that encourage solo fighting bonuses. Did you also fail to see that there was a post-game experience beyond the defeat of the dragon?

You lack appreciation for the concept of ‘medieval fiction’ and let alone seem to lack the attention span to analyze games that are supposed to commit you to your role as a character. You are supposed to stand in the shoes and walk EVERY step in them. Last time I checked, even if the hero was inconvenienced, at least they got the job done and were glad to have been able to do it.

The fact you even ‘finished’ the game seems a bit farfetched judging b how inaccurate and poor this review is. Did you even encounter the post-game disaster, the true Everfall, or the Seneschal?

Next time you review an rpg, make sure you actually sit down with it instead of skim through it like a child would through a book to get quick answers to write on the paper.

-Well the only problem here is there is no fast travel since you really love skyrim hehe thats the only problem at the game. and possibly you did not use ferry stone and played NG+ to transport on each city.
-I have to agree with you they have an irritating conversation when they see a foe, but its a good think especially if you play at night you can’t see a damn thing. and by the way at the option you can turn off the subtitle etc if your irritated.
-playing mage/sorcerer is a stupid thing to begin with. if you feel a pro about that your wrong and this game is somehow more accurate in a sense that when casting a strong spell you should cast longer thats some how accurate. One thing about your pawns; Better make the most out of it and chose your team wisely.

Sorry to say I LOL when I read your comments especially ” then ask for another one, which is finding some kind of goblin stronghold.” seriously dude, your just starting; did you upgrade your weapon? possibly don’t read the message board to find quest or explore the city, its just plain stupidity that you don’t know this and possibly copy paste the map above making you finish or explore everything.
-Have you EVER PLAYED Demon Soul’s and Demon souls? Try play that game possible you will die 10x at the beginning. All we know that this is NOT a perfect 10 like your favorites Halo and COD, you don’t have to write something about the game that you haven’t finish or known every detail about it. and for my keen observation, you don’t like exploration or sandbox style of gameplay, you wan’t the simple spoon feeding rpg and stick with ff13 with the one click button. Don’t whine on anything if you haven’t finish or fully review the game. It just make you a moron and ignorant as the same time. This review is poorly done, its just a perspective of a guy who don’t know what this game is all about. EPIC FAIL REVIEW…

Okay, I only read up to “Dragon on the Beach” and that’s all I needed to read in order to tell everybody this guy doesn’t know jack s#!t what he’s talking about. There are many things said that were wrong, not opinion oriented, but blatantly wrong. Honest criticism:

This game isn’t Skyrim, it’s not for everyone. It has bold design choices that make it a love it or hate it game. The lack of fast travel is one of these because it forces the player to experience nighttime which is actually a mechanic in the game (as the world changes at night, for the worse). It also gives that immersion of journeying with companions and facing obstacles through thick and thin.

Combat is deep and awesome. It is the bread and butter of this game and if anyone tells you otherwise they are lying. Felling a boss more than 5 times your size is excruciating, exhausting and extremely exhilarating. You can change your class anytime you want (assuming you didn’t get the inn keeper killed like me) just in case you get bored with one vocation; which you won’t in a single play through. But this game is hard. It does not hold your hand.

As for the story, the most accurate thing I could say is that this is the skeleton of a story. It’s like a framework. I really think that this is a deep and engaging story with mature themes like will power, love, sacrifice; especially with it’s theological twist at the end. Only those who have played this game properly can really get the story. But I think it could have been further developed, made deeper, there is so much potential. I do think you are left reading between the lines a little too much. And because this is an rpg that’s a bit unforgivable. What’s there is good, but not enough to make it epic.

Everything else like pawn chatter are minor annoyances. I’ll say this, unless you have anger issues you should be able to tune them out. As a matter of fact my main pawn was so sarcastic that I enjoyed hearing her talk. She’d just drop these one liners out of no where which made me giggle.

So there, that’s the synopsis of what an objective review is supposed to be like. If you like games like Dark Souls then this game would be a 9/10. If you’re more casual then this would be a 7/10. Forget this moron’s review, I think I summed it up adequately.

I read a few of your reviews, and while I think the writing itself is good, the content seems to follow a pattern with you: You learn as little as possible about the game you play, ONLY try to play as linear as possible, and then you write a wall of text bitching about it, or insulting (I use the term loosely, as I don’t know if it technically CAN be insulted) the game’s lore because you don’t pay attention. Have your opinions, whatever, that’s fine to each his own I suppose, but if that’s how you play games you should NOT review them. You’re going to create pre-judgement for whoever actually decides to listen to you and they’re going to lose out on really good games because you play a game without bothering to learn anything and then bitch and moan about it (even if you like the game), and that is definitely not fair to people who might be interested in this game but see your completely biased review and decide against it. If you can’t bother to learn stuff a game has other than the basic and most obvious features/story elements (and I mean in a number of your reviews, not just Dragon’s Dogma) then don’t write a review about it. I know personally if I see your name on a review I’ll be sure to avoid reading it, and I’ll make sure to tell others to do the same.

Now here’s a bit of irony…I agree with most of what you’re saying, but am finding it immensely enjoyable. I’ll adress your summary points:

1. The story is basically non-existent : The main story isn’t what it is about. It’s a generic story, and so was Skyrim’s: Do a bunch of stuff, then kill a dragon. There also a bit of intuition involved, or otherwise, the lack of communication of the story has resulted in that perception.

2. Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced : I found it fun. Don’t really know what to say here.

3. Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight : That’s true, that’s why you have a manual save option. Annoying that you cannot just load the last save without quitting, but really, if you’re careful with your saves it’s fine. The only times it’s annoyed me are when I’ve fallen off a cliff and not thought to save beforehand, or when I run into a chimera or something and can’t save until I’ve tried to kill it. So annoying, yes, I agree.

4. There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour : But at least there are plenty to equip. I do like customisation but it didn’t bother me much.

5. The map is close to useless : Not true at all. The map is excellent when you figure out what the ridges are going to be, if there’s a cave shortcut you can use, if there’s a camp close, etc. Unless you mean the little map, which is useless for all but orientation of character. Still, I’d rather it had swivelled with the character.

6. Traveling anywhere takes forever : Fine with it. Makes you think about the route and forces you to experience the world. I’ve gotten quite expedient at it, and can complete a quest either way from Gran Soren in about two days and a night.

7. The Pawns may as well be robots : Yep, but not as sturdy. Their constant BS advice can be turned off, but very seldom they do actually say something useful so I put up with it.

8. I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health : Upgrading weapons and armour? Mining rocks? Restoring stamina?…fetch quests?

9. The graphics are surprisingly bad : Oh god yes they are. A lot of the time you don’t pay particular attention, but on the character creation screen selecting scars, I couldn’t believe they’d done such a f***ing hopeless job. Clearly pixellated, every one of them.

10. The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read : Me too. Looks hopeless in the top left hand corner of the box too.

11. The voice acting is generic and annoying : Yep.

12. Villages and towns look lifeless : Not completely lifeless, but it does annoy me seeing people materialise in front of me, and never do anything other than stand and walk.

13. Enemies are monumentally durable : Nope, you’re just weak. They don’t scale, they’re meant to be durable early on.

14. Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any : Not always, but still, didn’t complain.

Some things I’d add: Stilted animations that are so atrocious I wouldn’t be paying that department at all, asynchronous multiplayer component very enjoyable and interesting to me, completely customisable party is awesome until you need a long ranged physical attacker because something is in a tree and you’ve got two mages and a warrior, number one gripe: the story doesn’t take your character into account at all, I had a female child character and was still accused of trying to get into bed with the duchess. All this said, I really like this game. We just have different priorities.

I really liked Monster Hunter as well, if that gives you any hints as to why I don’t mind the generic and/or hidden story.

Forgot to mention: Night time mechanic very well done, actually does make it more difficult. No fast travelling gives smaller enemies a chance to be dangerous if you’re just come from killing a drake. Slaying large monsters time-consuming but very rewarding, wouldn’t have it any other way. That said, if you’re a mage, wait for High Comestion, you’ll be rolling in it against anything less than a golem.

agreeing with this sack of Sh*t doesnt help you look any beter lol first of all look at the games he named as horrible seriously man he has horrible taste FACT.

second shut up about graphic seriously as long as you can tell wtf everything is then it shouldnt matter it like all game now days have to look realistic go play some old school youd turn them down only because graphic your not a real gamer gtfo

1. It doesn’t matter to me who this guy is and I haven’t seen anything else he’s done. I’m reaponding to this review.
2. Not trying to look better or good either. Although, if I were, I’d start with learning capital letters.
3. Graphics are important. Bad graphics can break immersion. I absolutely think they don’t constitute a major improvement between games, but they are important.
4. Fuck you. I am a real gamer. I’ve stayed up until 5 in the morning before an exam to defend my territory in ACV because my team was in a different time zone, and you dare to tell me I’m not a real gamer? You can shove that somewhere unpleasant.
5. I enjoy Mario, TF2, Portal, iPhone games, whatever, but games that have tried to be realistic always look like crap when graphics get better. Look at the first Deus Ex and tell me the graphics don’t take away from the experience.

I agree with all you said so far. Here is some stuff that is also bugging me which I believe was just laziness in the developers side. Lip Sync, is absolutely terrible, and voice acting. Their weren’t enough different voices and you can simply hear the same voice over and over from different characters if you spend some talking with everyone in Grand Soren.

I’ve been playing RPGs since you were just a twinkle in your father’s eye. To say this game is the worst ever is just plain silly. I delayed purchasing it because of negative reviews like this, but now that I have it, I’m pleasantly surprised.

Sure the story isn’t great, and the voice acting and character development could use a lot of improvement. It isn’t in the same league as the Mass Effect games in those areas. But that’s really not unusual for RPGs. Most MMO games have little to no character development or story line. Skyrim, which people seem to love for some reason, has a very short and quite disappointing story line, and what there is isn’t told very well. There’s no cut scenes and interaction with NPCs is limited and superficial. I wouldn’t rate Skyrim much better that Dragon’s Dogma in that regard.

But what Dragon’s Dogma does do very well is fun. The combat is fun, challenging and requires some skill without being as difficult as Dark Souls. The levelling and skill system is rich and rewarding. The world is open without being as unmanageable as Skyrim. The boss fights are awesome, giving a real sense of epic. There’s also enough in the game in terms of party based tactics, loot, level progression, and quests to satisfy traditional RPG gamers, which is hard to find in RPGs these days.

Sure some of the points in your review are valid, but when I’m playing the game I just don’t find myself caring about how confusing the story is. I’m having too much fun and being entertained regardless of those flaws. Some of the other points in your review really just show that you’ve either not played many RPGs before or perhaps they aren’t your thing. For example, the quests when you first create your pawn (such as killing scarecrows etc) are pointless, but that’s really the whole purpose of them. They are training quests, designed to show you how to play the game as a party. There is a long tradition of this in RPGs in case you didn’t know. Then take your comments about bandits taking more damage than wolves. Every single RPG I’ve ever played has human sized foes which can take exponentially more damage than other opponents you meet. Try Skyrim with its human priests which are tougher than dragons. Try Dragon Age origins with its cast of powerful human sized foes. Your comment can be applied just as equally to every RPG ever made as it can to Dragon’s Dogma.

For the record, I’m also playing as a mage, and I’ve had no trouble killing bandits with fireballs. Sure they are a challenge, but that’s the point. I’ve only died once so far, and that was from falling off a cliff.

“The story is basically non-existent”
There is a story, albeit not a very good one. It has been a long time since I’ve seen a good story in a game that allows a person to have somewhat open-ended play — in fact, I don’t believe there is a single game that has accomplished combining these two effectively that I can remember.

“Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced”
I actually found combat to be better than in many games, though it varies between classes somewhat. I like that spells take time to cast, varying on power, though yes, it means that casting a huge spell isn’t always beneficial. A mage is perhaps not the best class to choose for long-term play, though after a while almost everything falls easily.

“Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight”
Manual saves can be performed and while many complain about not being able to have multiple saves, I suspect the reasoning behind it is to dissuade item duplication, though it can be done anyway by saving to external devices and waiting a set number of days — not that there’s really much point in that anyway.

“There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour”
There are many types of armor, but if you are talking about the how the items looks, then perhaps I would agree. Being able to dye armor and items would perhaps add some value, considering that a person can do so for his/her character. It became pretty common to see every pawn wearing similar gear depending on class, except females wearing panties and nothing else — ugh.

“The map is close to useless”
Howso? The minimap isn’t all that helpful, but the large map works just fine. How is it useless?

“Traveling anywhere takes forever”
At the beginning it does, sure. Without a lot of stamina running is a pain. Later it’s not a problem at all.

“The Pawns may as well be robots”
Perhaps in some ways, yes. The addition of being able to hire other people’s pawns was great, but I believe the underlying problem to be voice sets for them. Given the limited dialog, instead of yelling out about a specific creature, I think it would have been better to simply have more generic dialog for a given situation, when it might be of value. For example, instead of a pawn yelling out that there is a chimera, every single time, just something such as being prepared for a battle — if the character’s level constitutes any kind of warning. If you’re level 150 or something, a chimera is about as harmless as a rat was at level 10.

“I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health”
Most of the items have some value and in more cases than not for upgrading of weapons and armor.

“The graphics are surprisingly bad”
Maybe for us old people gameplay is more important.

“The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read”
Interesting. My eyesight isn’t great and I had no problems with this.

“The voice acting is generic and annoying”
I suppose I went over much of this above. I think it actually needs to be more generic, but more varied. The repetition was the problem, unless of course they were to greatly increase the variety.

“Villages and towns look lifeless”
I agree with this.

“Enemies are monumentally durable”
Yeah, no. Some of the fights are supposed to be difficult at first, or at least time consuming — that’s part of the fun. Then again, if you had a sorcerer, you could have just killed most things before they even started to attack.

“Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any”
True and while I won’t excuse this game for it, I’ve found very few games that stray from this trend. Fetch, collect and kill quests are easy.

Based on your initial comment about not liking does very popular games since they are all similar in the rpg. All it shows is that you dont like does types of games but saying its the worst ever is like me saying that i dont like a musical game because of the type of musics it plays i dont like.

To some it up YOU DON’T LIKE THIS TYPE OF GAMES so why give a review on something you already start by hating. -_.._-

omg dude you are like the best funniest writer I’ve ever met in my life. I’m being completely honest when I say that I hate reading, but this was just outstanding m8 for now on I’ll be coming back to this site lol i read from top to bottom hilarious do more like these 😛

Everyone has their own opinion but you made a fool of yourself by complaining about the best things in this game. You should’ve completely played through the game before anything. This game was awesome, yes there could be a better story but aside from that it was a great game. The combat is awesome,the fact that you have plenty of classes to chose from and the opportunity to make your own character built was the best thing ever.
also:
– option to enchant equipment
-save at any time
-option to combine items
-option to change vocations whenever
-how your pawn can learn about quest/enemies/area and obtain items while they are out in a journey (assisting other players)
-lots of quest
-the game doesn’t really end after you kill the dragon
-good map
-good music
-ability to chose your own pawns
..I’m not even going to keep going, you are stupid so it doesn’t even matter. -,-

Hm, battles are quite epic in my opinion. The difficulty of this game makes it really interesting considering the fact that most games that come out these days you can simply breeze through and never play again. Although it gets frustrating finding a sudden death situation that sends you back hours before, it makes it to where you have to learn how to survive, rather than just destroy everything you face with ease. Running IS an option. I’ve had to do it numerous times when venturing into a new area, finding that the sun suddenly set before I was ready, and suddenly everything in coming out and attacking me.

Fighting the large enemies is really epic. Being able to jump onto a cyclops to knock off its helmet to be able to strike the eye ( its’ weak point ) thus making the battle easier was cool. Or striking it hand to make it drop its weapon. Or holding onto a chimera as it dashed through the woods and delivering killing blows to it. Or even the Ogres which were impossibly tough and often resulted in me rushing through a cave to try to outrun and escape it.

Tossing enemies off of a cliff was a fun one for me. I found that option to be fairly amusing and helpful in tight spots. As for the wolves being easier than the bandits? They’re just as deadly. Run into a pack of them at night when you can’t see anything and your health is halfway down from fighting bands of goblins, and you might find yourself having to restart at the last Rift Stone if you didn’t save.

Oftentimes if you’re not adventurous enough, you can wait in a safe spot until morning. Or for a challenge, try trekking through the woods at night and fighting the random enemies that swarm you. I remember at one point I was exploring an unknown area, found myself running into a pack of goblins with some random ghosts appearing out of no where ( which I hadn’t fought them until then ), then heard the sound of some aerial creature which turned out to be the Dragon. Or at least I think it was the Dragon. It had a massive health bar ( with like nine circles? ) and blasted me with fire out of no where. I couldn’t see anything because something had blinded my character, so I was running blindly through the woods with the sound of goblins and fire all around me. It was pretty epic, even if I was fleeing a battle like some pansy.

All in all, although there are some things which can be improved ( like not being able to kill the chief of the fishing village, because I decided to throw him off the dock and feed him to the brine ) and a more interactive story, I find the innovative new systems which were introduced with this game to be a win. It’s different then the norm, while reminding me of a lot of the games which have come out.

Btw, my wife started out with a mage, and she kicks ass. So I don’t know what this is about getting your tail kicked if you’re a mage. Just play your cards right, and balance your team. It should work out. Personally I play as a strider, have my main Pawn as a Mage, and my extras are generally a strider and a fighter. That way you’ve got one person to augment/heal the party, two distance fighters, and the powerhouse to run in and bash everything to death and serve as an excellent meat shield.

tonight, the nun, is learning how to speak in tongues.
tonight she’ll come, to understand the evil one.
nine inches of god will rise and sing her songs of praise.
nine inches of god inside will rectify her ways.
level with the devil,
kneeling in the night,
take his tube and smoke his pipe,
join loins,
lock your glands,
feel the roman spear in your hands!
nine inches of god
nine inches of god

The story is basically non-existent
Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced
Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight
There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour
The map is close to useless
Traveling anywhere takes forever
The Pawns may as well be robots
I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health
The graphics are surprisingly bad
The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read
The voice acting is generic and annoying
Villages and towns look lifeless
Enemies are monumentally durable
Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any

i find it hard to believe u feel even stupider then u did b4 you played it. cuz going by ur game journal ur pretty goddamn stupid dude. its called magic dude.. its why the dragon said those words and did what he did and made him how he is. i didnt beat it so cant say more on that.but do u realizes that ea monster especially the big ones have weaknesses? like the chimera is weak vs magic and u have to cut its tail off 1st then kill the lion or goat head then finish off the last head. some u have to hit it in the eye or damage its wings then cover it in oil and set it on fire or w/e to do more damage then normal to it. i never hard a problem with running apart from having to rest alot. the fighting can be a pain but never really had a problem with that either.infact only thing i do have a problem with this game is its lacking good things to find in chests. travel all around find and i find 4 chests all next to ea other after killing a boss or bunch of hard enemies then open them to get a crappy potion or 1k coins or some junk item over and over and over and over and so on. lvl 40 and my pawn mage still has about the same gear apart from the stuff i got at town or along he way by a slim stroke of luck. i find u very childish to not even finish the game no matter how horrid it is to u then bash it like u played it till the end or even enough to understand it. guess u didnt know u can upgrade ur skills and change ur class of u and ur main pawn. u gather items to upgrade them to lvl 3. which can be upgraded to dragonforged should u fight 1 and have lvl 3 items. this game kinda does just toss u in the middle of it all and not really tell u what to do or how to do it. but if u have a i.q higher then a rock and patience to learn it then u will do fine.. i would hate to see u play dark souls that game would have u crying to ur mommie and all the way back to the store to return it as well as on ur game journals haha. think u should go back to your barbie pc games and whatnot cuz these games arent for u

First impression: huh. Well, maybe the story was kinda forced and cliche. Let’s hear what he has to say.

Second impression: 30 hits? Goblins taking massive amounts of fireballs to the face? I played as a mage my first run through, and every goblin I met died in 3-5. Although, maybe he did have a valid point about the kicking the oxen thing. I shall trudge on.

Third impression: At Gran Soren…still pissy about enemies having way too much health and killing him ( but they’re too easy, just hard to kill and kill him sometimes ) and can’t figure out where to go? Is this guy trolling? Wait…three mages in his party…*facepalm*

Final impression: TROLLOLOLOLOL

Alternate ending: You, sir, are a fucking moron. Go back to playing Call of Duty, please….

Possibly one of the funnest games i’ve played in a long time.
Like pretty much everything about it so i’m going to finish it a second time, just for fun and i’m gonna end up buying because of its replay value.
just hope Dragon’s Dogma 2 let’s you import your character from the first game.

You suck. You obviously only play games like CoD which FUCKING SUCK. You didn’t even complete the game. Professional reviewers, whether they like it or not complete the games before they post a review. Everything you slagged off was false and I’ve read a lot of the comments, and in some of your replies you even contradicted what you said. I also read that you don’t even like RPGs, so don’t play them just to give them your crappy score because nothing you have put is credible.

Wait….wait. You think bioshock is a bad game? lol you think dragon’s dogma is the worst game ever? You clearly must be some kind of retard. Just stop playing games, you clearly don’t get them. Go back to playing COD/Halo if you must play. God damn you are retarded.
Mainstream gaming fucktards should just stick to playing their 360s, raging and calling people faggots over and over again on their headsets.

“I’m just going to go ahead and say it. Dragon’s Dogma is the worst game I have ever played.

Even my most hated of games like BioShock, Prototype, Red Dead Redemption and Might and Magic: Dark Messiah at least have some semblance of charm and character. But Dragon’s Dogma is just empty. And yes I know that those are some very popular games I just branded, so I guess that makes my opinion automatically wrong, right?”

Your last sentence in this statement above is the most accurate and valid thing you posted. Your opinion isn’t worth taking a shit on. Before I even begin to tear you a new asshole, how the hell did you not like Red Dead Redemption? That game is the blue print for what every western game should be. Good combat, great story, definitely some of Rock Star’s best work. I personally have not played Bio Shock, but I find it hard to believe that so many people would hold it in high regards if it was trash. I’ve seen gameplay of that game and know a little bit about the story, and all I can think is “Why haven’t I played this game yet?” Now, onto Dragon’s Dogma. Clearly you didn’t take the time to pay attention to the prologue or you wouldn’t have been so confused. The Chimera in that level was easy as shit. How you had difficulty with that is beyond me. Only a noob would start off as a mage. If you want to be a magic user wait till you get to Gran Soren and change your vocation to a sorcerer. Mages should be utilized as support only, and the game gives you the option to manipulate your main pawns actions in combat via knowledge chair. You know so little about the full extent of this game. I wanted to back hand you when you said the enemies had ridiculous amounts of health. For real? Just put down the controller and walk away. Sure, the bandits on the path to Witchwood are a little tough early on in the game, mainly the warriors or two handed wielders, but that’s why you don’t go freakin mage nubb nubb. As for your character fighting the dragon in the village, hmm I don’t know maybe he was trying to fend it off from destroying the place he calls home ya stupid. Did you really need that in text or were you dropped on your head as a baby? What got me the most was your distaste in the combat. Wait, huh, what? What other game allows you to cling to the back of a griffin as it soars high in the sky as you try light fire to its wings? I’m waiting….yeah that’s what I thought. There’s so much variety between skill you can equip and vocations you can change. By the way you’re a fool to only pick up health curatives. No wonder you got raped by every enemy you weren’t able to upgrade your weapons morons. And, trust me come post game your gonna wish you had eyedrops, smothering saps, and especially a shit ton of secret softeners. Not looking for a challenge, eh? Maybe pong is more your speed. Had you thrown Mass Effect into your list of hated games, I would’ve been prompted to take your to court and demand your right to free speech be revoked (Assuming you live in the U.S.) If not then I’d simply have your lips skewered for spewing such blasphemy. This “journal” of yours is so bad that IGN would probably offer you a job ’cause your take on this game is absoluting baffling just like the majority of their reviews. GG noob, G fucking G!

I agree with almost everything you said. With the exception of… Mage bashing. I started out as a Mage, and have been having a blast. Of course, I was smarter than the reviewer here, in that I figured that if I was a magic user, I’d need my other Pawns to take over the “heavy lifting”. So, I made my Companion Pawn a fighter. I went into the Rift and got an Archer, and with Rook, I had an assistant to buffing/healing/fighting… while my Archer does some awesome ranged attacks, AND some really killer melee range attacks (that I was very happily surprised were even an option).

Full disclosure would dictate that I did buy a DLC pack that gives me some okay armor/weapons and 2000 Rift Crystals.. so picking up my first few Pawns is much easier than going solo in the beginning…

Totally agree with you there my good man!
I just recently started playing this game and I am hooked. I love it. It”s long, challenging, and I can make my own character which makes it personal per se. I’m playing as an assassin elven girl and am kicking @$$!
To me it sounds like this game is just to hard for the guy. It has to much of a story for his wittle brain to follow. I’m not really a gamer but I have no problems.
What he is really saying is:
This game is way to hard therefore it sucks….
Red Dead Redemption had to good of a storyline therefore….
I sucked at my vocation therefore…..
You get the pic.

LOL! your review is interesting. I personally love the game! =( But it’s your opinion and everyone has their own views on the game. I just felt bad that you’re getting flamed by everyone. The game get’s a little easier the more you play it I think, I always get killed by bandits while trying to level up earlier in the game. Dx It happens. But I think the game is unique, I love it the fact that the character creations are in depth and you could also customize how your character looks! I always wanted that and thought it was great. I mean yes I wish there were more armor choices like Monster Hunter, but maybe we might have more add ons.

This is the most pathetic review I have ever read. This game may not be perfect but it has tons of UPS. You clearly have no taste in video games. I’m sure you’re all about cod or world of warcraft. This review was and is not worth reading, let alone listening to the ignorance of a noob.

After finding this review on this site, I don’t think I’ll bother with the website. This overemotional review of a game seems almost like the reviewer started out with an agenda against it, or like he was one of those people who rages and spews everything they can hoping MMOs will fail.

I’m not some hardcore super skilled master and I didn’t have half the problems with combat in the game (I’m certainly not bad either). If good combat for you only consists of stun locking/juggle combos and hacking at enemies that don’t react at all (ie most rpgs and mmorpgs), then yeah, its not for you. A game that allows you to climb atop a giant beast and stake it in the back or the eye, or shoot a harpy out the air and then dive on her and pick her up and throw her into the fire…that’s some pretty impressive and unique combat right there. You can do things, its not the same charge in and attack, maybe block, spam some special kill-everything abilities.

I don’t know, the reviewer has far too much of an opinion and desire for other things to be trustworthy. I guess the muted colors equates to towns feeling lifeless for him, since there are always people walking around, repairing walls, fishing, carrying things. Maybe he is expecting more vibrance in colors and attitudes – which is fine if that’s his taste, but if you can’t be objective, keep your reviews away.

No fast travel gets to be a pain, yeah, and the story is a JRPG one (Yeah, there are some great ones, but the ones that aren’t great are often nonsense written by 1st grade kids. This one has its good characters and little moments). Combat is reactive, you have a ton of options on how to play and what you can do, the world is detailed, though it does look a bit dated (I won’t put a game down for that)…anyway, enough.

I wouldn’t read this guy’s reviews for anything else if I saw his name on it, but I might consider by someone else. IGN style reviews..game reviews in general are getting worse these days.

The story is basically non-existent- that’s you name your character when has ANY game said your character’s name or if a named character ever talked
Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced-really… really… have you ever played Zelda
Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight- dude every game does that
There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour- ….typo and can’t argue with that if I even use as much
The map is close to useless-clearly you don’t know how to read maps
Traveling anywhere takes forever- quick tip: BUY A DAMN FERRY STONE
The Pawns may as well be robots- their AI is pretty damn clever you just don’t know how to choose your pawns and not know how to GIVE them curative you selfish asshole
I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health- and thats why you die so fast
The graphics are surprisingly bad- no it isn’t
The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read- then move your damn chair closer
The voice acting is generic and annoying- it’s old english get used to it (seriously I got used it fast)
Villages and towns look lifeless- because they’re all at the main lobby area you know where all the shops are
Enemies are monumentally durable- no you just suck
Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any- yes there are you just don’t look for them
dude… are you even giving the game a chance or just being an asshole and I hope to God your trolling cause this is just no you need to start over and give it a chance
(and if you are going to that here’s a pro tip:
Mage’s: support, be sure to have a strider or a fighter main pawn
Fighter’s:Offense or Defense, it all depends how often you use your shield but the main pawn make whatever you damn well please and make sure your temporary’s are mages with curative magick
and finally Striders:Support or Offense, again it depends on often you use a bow
and the rest is on the fighter’s info)

You’re are such a POS. The second I saw that you hated red dead and bioshock I knew this review was gonna be a joke. I honestly thought you were trolling because to be this serious about a game bein this bad….wow. You’re what people call a CASUAL GAMER. Stick to games that are more mainstream and user friendly. Ones that have constant checkpoints and require little to no thought to play. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you should just stick to the quests and leave the bandits for later after you got better gear. Oh yea, you played 6 hours and wrote this review too. Obviously you suck at anything that isn’t an FPS I bet, hell. I bet you’re fukn terrible at First person shooters too. You complained and nitpicked about the smallest stuff. You question the dumbest shit. You probably love games like COD, especially all that copy and paste while adding a couple things to spice up every years new Call of duty. You should stay away from reviewing ever again.

i dont think its a bad game.. i just dont like the fact that i am spending my whole afternoon bashing at a trolls head and then out of nowhere it picks me up and eats my head in one bite and then i have to re do the whole dungeon again.

why are monsters so long to kill in that game ? the reward factor is not on par with the time invested in killing those freaking thing.

wait a minute, you said you didn’t like bioshock or red dead redemption? you must have asperger’s syndrome, that explains it. freakin idiot, I’m not giving your review a damn bit of credit based on what you just said about two awesome games. Your review means shit

Your post means shit. Attacking people with a mental disorder is completely sidetracked and sure hell doesn’t place you in a respectful image. I’ve 1000 hours into this game and have done absolutely everything there is to do, and guess what, dickhead, I’m diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.

I can’t even believe this. I didn’t even finish read the rest of your review, because it was just CRAPPY. You must have a whole lot of time on your hands to actually sit down and write this huge review just to bash a really great game. Maybe it’s because I just don’t really care to pay attention to it, but I don’t see much wrong with the graphics or anything. Sure, the running all around the world, trying to get stuff done before night falls so you won’t get mauled to death is annoying, but hey! Get over it! The beginning of the game is pretty necessary, I think because later on at some point near the end, IT ALL MAKES SENSE. So you sit there running your mouth about not getting the beginning where you have to be that guy and kill the chimera and stuff, but if you PAY ATTENTION, you will know.

Also, I actually like the towns and villages. Well, not completely. Mostly because I keep getting arrested in Gran Soren.. Lol, but that’s just because I like to be bad sometimes in games.
And about your intake of the combat and fighting system.. Shut up. Just shut up, because you don’t know anything. The battles are the best part of the game! Duh! Fighting a griffin that you can cling to and beat the crap out of while trying not to fall to your death. What part of that isn’t fun and exciting and also part terrifying (cause you don’t wanna die).

Another thing: Either learn from experience, or just use common sense.
In games like this, you must always be cautious, observant, and wary. It tests your own personal skills, and I like that. Heading into a really big room that looks, oh, I don’t know… suspicious? SAVE THE FREAKING GAME. Common sense.
Like others have said in their comments to your “review”.. You just suck if you die THAT easily.
Even with other players’ pawns, you can still be personal.
Heck, I even end up loving pawns that aren’t mine, merely because they are good looking, and/or they’ve helped me numerous times and kept me alive.
All in all, taking the time out to complete the game AND enjoy it: Totally worth it in the end.
One more thing: I understand some of the things people complain about concerning Dragon’s Dogma. Not all of them. The only thing I don’t like about this game is that I’m tired of getting scared and being startled by wolves lunging at me or chimeras just popping up, or skeleton warriors knocking me off the edge of a tower while I’m trying to loot.
So in conclusion, you.. you just don’t know anything. Please don’t review anything else.

please work on your vocabulary you seriously sound like a twelve year old boy writing this i imagine the pain i felt reading your review was the pain that you felt playing this game “I see a dragon, it talks (which was pretty cool actually) and then we fight some goblins and a Chimera. So far I’m not as hooked as I expected, but that dragon is pretty cool I guess.” you sound like my little emo nephew always saying shit like “pretty cool i guess” must be hard up for reviewers having someone like you write such boring unjustified crap.

Everyone who says dragons dogma sucks are complete retards and should just jump off the face of the earth and to the moron who says bioshock, prototype, red dead and might and magic dark messiah needs to get his head out of his ass. those are pretty good games. you probably dont like them because they are too hard for your dumb ass. how about put down the real games and go play candyland unless that will be too hard for you also. Dragons dogma has so many classes and very customizable. its a great game. so plz do us a favor and stop dissing the game and delete your account.

Dragons in Medieval European folklore were about the size of a horse, but shorter. maybe a bit longer because of the tail. As a student of history, mythology, and literature, Gygax made the dragons in classic AD&D (which Dragon’s Dogma borrows liberally from) more within plausible proportions, in relation to humans and physics; they range from 24 to 54 feet long, depending on their color (Tiamat and Bahamut are larger than that, the exception being that they are deities). Making them many times larger than a dinosaur, so immense that a person could build a house in their mouths, is just silly. They would be impossible to take on. Go wrestle a real life crocodile, or an overgrown python — not a pushover — add intelligence, breath weapon, great flexibility, the ability to fly, spellcasting, dextrous talons, a razor tail, and you have a formidable opponent.

worst reviewer ever! do you know the first thing about reviewing a game? does the fact that you have to learn a game scare you? the whole first part before charecter creation is to give you a feel for the game and the different roles by observing the other 3 DUH!. WAH!!!! traveling takes forever welcome to life before cars dickhead. enimes were strong cause you played a whole six hours, didnt lvl or get any decent gear, if you would have stuck to the main story for a bit to even understand what the game was all about you would have had an easier time. this isnt a cookie cutter run through and dominate game. its challenging invintive and fun ass hell. next time give a game more than six hours just because your not good at a game in 5 min does not make it a poor game. your just not that good

Dude if you don`t like a game, just don`t play it. Not that capcom needs your opinion anyway, since there`s another Dragon`s Dogma coming up. You seems like an annoying kid that don`t understand whats doing. Dragon`s Dogma is a great title by its own stratagy and other qualities like magic skills and weapons skills that others game, like Skyrim, lack. But of course, someone as dumb as you can`t understand this, so go back to you call of duties or another game that don`t need a funcional brain and stop annoying true rpg players. What a waste of time seeing your review or whatever you call that junk, but I felt insulted, so be a good kid and don`t do this again.

This is the worst review of a game I have ever seen, seems like a review made by a guy who mixed emotional things with its own regret. Well dude, you are wrong. DD is a great title, and the Dark Arisen DLC make it even great. The qualities of skills and magics of this game is the most amazin I have ever seen in a open world RPG. Dragon’s Dogma was at first an experience made by Capcom, and its sucess will grant a new title soon. But of course, a slime-ball like you probably won’t understand this.

Your review, or whatever you call this shit, is totaly fail, you have mixed many emotional issues like total hate for the title with your comments. No game reviewers ever made this, you are like an annoyind kid complaining about something, just that. So my suggestion to you dude, go back to your Call of Duties or Skyrim, or another game that don’t require a functional brain.
I felt insulted by your review, or whatever you call that piece of junk, and waste my time in registration, but I felt like I need to comment. Be a good kid and don’t do this again.

I started playing this game a few days ago and I am with you 100%. I find the dialog and the storyline sophomoric. I let my 11 year old daughter play it and seems more fitting for her age group. Although I must admit, after playing “The Last of Us,” all other games pale in comparison. But this is just dribble.

It’s actually an incredibly philosophical story with bad dialogue. This guy’s opinion is trash. It is entirely based on his ignorance of the RPG genre (doesn’t even seem to know what a Party is), inability to use R1 and L1, and expectation of every plot point to be fully explained 30 seconds after it is introduced.

Mr Fullbrook,
As a fellow games reviewer I can’t help but feel almost insulted at the complete lack of professional and journalistic ability put into this review of Dragon’s Dogma.
Now I won’t begin to rant and rave about the virtues of this diamond of a game – as it would be redundant in a public forum and I feel that you won’t even listen.
As a reviewer it is your job to give every product a full analysis without bias.
Your bias is present from the very beginning of this article. You have incredible difficulty with the beginning hours a game that my 12 year old nephew has reached level 100 on within three months of casual play and this has soured your pallet so harshly that you are incapable of seeing past your own arrogance.
The article completely fails at reviewing Dragon’s Dogma to the point that I did not even see any point being made other than you keep failing at a game thousands still play in post-game and that you have not in fact even played it long enough to understand the plot.
Did you play any other classes? Did you play it beyond the 6 hour mark? Did you sample all the game mechanics? I really do hope you don’t get paid for this unprofessional ranting – I for one have given a detailed and professional review on my medium The Gaming Rig UK.
Kind Regards,
James Simpkin – Sr Reviews Editor – TGR

SIX HOURS!? It stops right there for me, this review doesn’t deserve the respect for further reading, this is utterly pathetic. Just that says all about how you’re not competent enough to have an opinion.

I respect your views, but I must say I feel like your dislike of this game stems from not being good at it. For starters, a mage is difficult to begin with because it is flimsy. (Obviously) Also, a mage uses mostly spells, if you didnt have at least all three basic elemental spells by the first camp then you were doing something wrong. It also sounds like you put no effort into hiring decent pawns to compliment your character, or finding new equipment. This game has the best combat I’ve seen in an openworld rpg, all the classes are fun, and some spells are just awesome.

Secondly, it’s a hard game. While this point is more subjective, I personally enjoy less hand holding. Anyone who has any common game sense knows the closed door to still be an exit…..I feel like you dislike mainstream things specifically to look cool, otherwise, there would be zero reasons for your list of disliked mainstream games at the the beginning.

Lastly, some points I agree with. The world is bland except for a handful of places you never got to, the story is bad until the very end, and wolves are the worst thing ever.

P.s. I apologize for the people on here cussing you out. They make normal fans of this game look bad.

This game offers a type of combat that I haven’t seen since shadow of the colossus. It isn’t just ankle stabbing like many of these games, you can literally cut into a dragon while it’s flying. I don’t think they could have set up the mechanics of this game any better. Although you might could argue that the story was rather lackluster, the combat got me addicted. I liked that it took longer to kill things, and everything offered a challenge at one point or another. You felt that much better accomplishing what you set out to. And although annoying at times, the pawns were an awesome idea.

He says at the beginning that it’s not a review but a journal, implying that it will be a subjective, meandering dissertation on his experience. Yet everyone seems to have missed that and is criticizing it as if it’s been submitted for publication. I agreed with most of his main points. It is a bland monotonous experience, but I do like the pawn system, and think there’s a lot of potential.

To those calling him a faggot etc: wow, so original and scathing. Your insight into his sexual orientation is acerbic. Your simple-mindedness verges on subhuman.

Him stating that it’s more of a journal doesn’t make it any less of a game review. He’s comparing it to other games from the beginning (BioShock/RDR) and states at the end how it’s going to end up on his list of worst games. The article is written as a journal but he’s posting it as a fucking review. And it sucks dick.

The Title screen music is probably the most unexpected music choice I’ve ever experienced in a game. For a good reason. The music first starts with a cheesy piano and strings music of the type you hear in any generic anime. Then it becomes uber cheesy, exploding in some even more generic rock/punk/Jpop tune.

The rest is pretty much as the original author describes. But he didn’t play the game long enough to stumble upon the truly horrendous bits of the game.

It has unrecoverable dead ends.

° Quests can be rendered non-completable simply by exploring an area before picking up the quest. Some enemies that you need to kill in order to complete a quest do NOT re-spawn.

° You character can get stuck. This obvious bug is the worst of them all, and takes a bit of explanation. I ended up in jail for hitting the wrong button when speaking to people in town. Stubborn I am, I refused to pay 5000g to the guard. I had to wait 45 minutes (!!!) for the fucking game to let me out.

So next time I ended up in jail (because I hit the wrong button) I had a Skeleton Key, which I had acquired to use at a place where an important quest item is located. I go up to the door, pressing the talk button to pay the damn guard 5k, but instead of opening up the conversation with the guard, the game decides to use up my precious Skeleton Key instead without asking if I wanna use it or not. And on top of this NOW the fucking guard comes up and charges me 5k.

A bit later in the game I have another Skeleton Key… I hit the wrong button again, (and at this point I come to realize why I do this. It’s because when in talk mode, you can cancel out by hitting one of the fight buttons, so here I am spamming that butting and once the window closes I whack the NPC with my warhammer instead) SO… now I’m the wiser. I deliberately use my Skeleton Key to open the door. I make sure the guard is not there as I step out of my cell. Then I beat the shit out of the guard, killing him in the process. I rummage through the crates and find another Skeleton Key. The big door out of here does NOT take the key. Instead I use it up by opening up another cell door. This was the wrong cell door, as in NOT the one with the secret passage way out of here. I am now stuck in the jail cell block. Now I’m more curious of how far the suckiness goes, so I wait 45 mins… then 50 mins… then 1.5 hour. All that’s really left to do is to reset the game.

This type of ill-thought through game design, where sheer player inventiveness can literally BREAK the game is inexcusable. At this point I’ve spent about 10 hours on the game, and I no longer have any interest in playing it. I delete my safe file and return the game to the person I borrowed it from. Thank god I didn’t spent any money on it.

You successfully glitched the game by fucking about with a game mechanic. It happens. I don’t see how this reflects badly on Capcom and its workforce but I take your point; a dual save system would have been better. But if you’re committing time to a game like this you should always have a backup on USB or on PS+ in case you have a powercut or corrupted game save etc.

Jesus dude. This is fucking ridiculous. I can’t believe somebody gave you space on a webpage to write this. It’s like a fucking Amazon review but with pictures and shitty little bullet point summary at the end!

I can’t believe you spent 6 hours playing this game and couldn’t adapt to the fact that this game is a fucking RPG. This game has spells and shit, it has experience points, leveling systems, class based combat. It’s a fucking RPG. You’re basically bitching about a game because it doesn’t play as an action adventure. It’s not Uncharted. It’s not Tomb Raider. It’s a fucking RPG.

Seriously, evaluate yourself as a journalist. Read reviews from other writers. Deconstruct them. You’re entitled to state your opinion but fucking balance yourself. You’re meant to be providing an impartial evaluation of the game; not venting off about all the dumb shit you didn’t like. At least understand what you’re reviewing and provide people with an actual review.

Then again this could just be a ploy to generate traffic. Congratulations. To be honest as soon as you mentioned your dislike for BioShock you basically committed me to reading your entire article. Kudos. Maybe you’ll get more readers. You have me for today. But for the wrong fucking reasons…

wow.. stop playing video games.. but more importantly stop writing reviews. Prototype, bioshock, and dragons dogma are all very enjoyable games.. maybe video games aren’t for you. I’m sorry but your trying to fix something that isnt broken. And to anyone reading this thats interested in dragons dogma I am currently playing the expansion right now and loving it. Yes it has its flaws but they are easily outweighed by it’s other amazing features. and i hope there will be a dragons dogma 2 and am really looking forward to it.

“The Chimera battle was more of a sign that this game was bad than I first thought. After six hours I’m kicking myself for not just quitting then and there.”

It took you HOW long to beat the friggin’ Chimera? My WIFE beat the tutorial Chimera in about a minute, and she’s pretty new to gaming. You are bad at this.

” My allies also die very quickly, which is easily fixed by me just going over to them and pressing B, so the whole battle made me feel uncomfortably invincible.”

*facepalm*

Chimeras are designed to be defeated by level 20 characters. For the purposes of the tutorial, you play a level 60 character who figures into the story at the very end. Have I mentioned that this is the TUTORIAL? You are bad at this.

“So, some unexplained door opens”

*facepalm*

“and the game cuts jarringly to a character creation screen. Wait, that wasn’t my character?”

You don’t say?!

“At first I thought they were going to have some kind of slavery theme flowing through the story, since Pawns apparently aren’t even human and essentially act as your ‘combat slaves’, but they’re just ‘people’ who fight with you. Nothing else.”

You flagrant fucktard. You JUST admitted that you have only played six hours! And now you are claiming to know what themes run through the game?! Does the absurdity of that even register in your mind?

“This destroyed my Fable-esque decision of making my character a child, because I’m given people who will follow me everywhere, which makes the whole game one big escort mission.”

lern2RPG. Having other characters with you is called a PARTY. Like Dungeons and Dragons, like The Hobbit, like The Lord of The Rings, like Dragon Age.

“On a side note, to exit my village I had to walk up and push B on a closed gate. A CLOSEDgate. That is so unintuitive. Why would I assume a closed gate would lead me out? A door I can understand since it can be opened and closed easily by one person. But this is a portcullis.”

So wait, there should just be “doors” going out into the field? The point of a defensive wall is that it has gates. That are closed. You open them to leave or enter. This is an incredibly stupid complaint, as if everything said so far is brilliant.

“Anyway, moving on.”

Oh goodie.

“My attacks consist of swinging my staff, which is too slow and weak to ever be worth using, and shooting out several magical blue balls that shatter like tiny ice cubes on enemies.”

lern2castspells. Are you literally trashing a game for your inability to figure out what L1 and R1 are and how to press them?

“Apparently bandits are made out of diamonds and titanium, and wolfs are made out of tissues.”

lern2RPG. RPGs have a lot of stats. Some enemies have higher stats than others.

“And here is one of the worst things about Dragon’s Dogma. There is nothing going on with my character. He doesn’t talk and is completely blank”

And, finally, halfway through your ‘article’, we come to the first legitimate criticism of the game. And make no mistake, everything before this is completely invalid. I don’t know if you were having a bad day or what, but all of this stupid stuff you’ve been saying is based entirely on ignorance and irrationality.

” This game sure loves introducing ideas and situations only for them to have no consequence to anything.”

Again, how the hell can you talk about the consequences of things when you played for six hours? Is your brain really so Mountain Dew-addled that you literally think that everything introduced must be addressed within the half hour after you first see it? That sort of instant gratification wouldn’t even be good in a Western RPG, but in Japanese fiction, it is traditional not to over-explain things, and make you use your brain to contemplate what you are shown.

“Since enemies take such an obscene amount of punishment, and I have such a pitiful attack, a single battle can wipe me out in seconds. The game seems to think I’m ready, so why are my attacks so weak?

Everything has the ability to kill me with one hit, so I keep my distance and shoot some magical balls over and over and over and over and over and over and over until one of my Pawns finishes an enemy off. It took me about six attempts to get down the path and to the next camp, especially since one wolf can blind sight me and bite all my health off in one go.

This isn’t engaging or even challenging. It’s just monotonous because I have such a limited an seemingly useless way of attacking anything and have to stand 20 feet away from the action. The Pawns aren’t much help either since each of them dies a few seconds after they get revived.”

Seriously, you’re bad at this. And seriously, LERN.2.CAST.

Do you even realise how pathetic and stupid you look raging against a game because you suck at it?

“So, I end up in some waterfall cave thing, but I just give up on this and make my way back to the guy who gave me the objective.”

…Okay? You end up behind the waterfall and then you give up? I think you forgot to explain your crying at this point. Is the implication that waterfalls are gross? That there was some kind of kitten monster behind the waterfall that confounded your non-spellcasting mage?

“I then ask for another one, which is finding some kind of goblin stronghold.”

Oh, you poor baby. You asked for a quest to find a goblin stronghold and then you got a quest to find a goblin stronghold. You should probably sue Capcom.

“I’m walking up a ledge and a bandit shootsONE arrow at me, and I die. One arrow. Before the game even recognizes that I’m dead, I turn the console off, sit down at my computer and begin writing all of this.”

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

“I literally feel stupider after all of that.”

Well, that explains the article.

Seriously, you have no business around a controller or a keyboard. Unless you are as evil as you are stupid, you will never inflict innocent people with your impression of a video game again. You may have thought that getting into video game journalism was an acceptable alternative to finishing school, but for that to be a possibility, you would have to display some modicum of intelligence and skill. You don’t. At least not here.

wow.. stop playing video games.. but more importantly stop writing reviews. Prototype, bioshock, and dragons dogma are all very enjoyable games.. maybe video games aren’t for you. I’m sorry but your trying to fix something that isnt broken. And to anyone reading this thats interested in dragons dogma I am currently playing the expansion right now and loving it. Yes it has its flaws but they are easily outweighed by it’s other amazing features. and i hope there will be a dragons dogma 2 and am really looking forward to it.

wow.. stop playing video games.. but more importantly stop writing reviews. Prototype, bioshock, and dragons dogma are all very enjoyable games.. maybe video games aren’t for you. I’m sorry but your trying to fix something that isnt broken. And to anyone reading this thats interested in dragons dogma I am currently playing the expansion right now and loving it. Yes it has its flaws but they are easily outweighed by it’s other amazing features. and i hope there will be a dragons dogma 2 and am really looking forward to it. Oh and not just enjoyable but successful. Hence, bioshock 1, 2, and 3 and prototype 1 and 2, and just wait for dragons dogma 2. Glad your shitty reviews don’t matter 🙂
P.S. i think got this in the right reply box this time hahaha

LOL I also like skyrim, KoA, dark souls…. I just like open world rpgs over all… so does that make me a fanboy of those too? I am a fan……ok, so that’s the fan part……. I am a boy…… so that takes care of the boy part…… FANBOY! Wow the most uninsulting attempt at insulting someone I’ve probably ever heard in my life!!
Dude you should go back to middle school and learn how to insult people, I was more clever then you in elementary school…… so maybe you should go back there

This game “fails hard,” you got “noob” in there and then “fanboy,” which, I dunno, could that be a gamer website thing? I’m not on these websites often, but I saw this review and felt compelled to say something…..anywho, dude, sounds like to me you like to use trendy phrases, which to me, makes you an incredible douche bag. go put on some tight jeans and cry while you kiss your boyfriend. You hipster. (I dont know anything about you, but technically my statement is just as factual as yours, seeing as you dont know any of these people)

This isn’t a review.
This is the ranting of a dumbass who gives up at a game he sucks at without even trying to play it correctly. And you don’t like bioshock either? I bet you played the first ten minutes and gave up because it didn’t tell you why you were in Rapture yet.
Please just go back to CoD or get the hell out of video games

You know, after my initial angry reaction about how lame I thought this “review” was, my anger has now morphed into pity. I actually feel bad for the author for not being able to appreciate or enjoy all the little things that make this game magical. The thought of “how can ANYONE not like this game” is pushed aside by, “wow, some people just cant be pleased.” Its sad.

Below are just some of the things I have grown to love about this game and im hoping that maybe some people that havent played this game yet will read my comment and try it out, instead of listening to this author.

First off, the way the devs handled torch/lamp light in this game is mesmerizing… Wandering around in the pitch black night and seeing a torch lit castle entrance in the distance made me feel legitimately warm and hopeful.

The combat is awesome, end of story. Yes, you start out weak with lame gear. Yes the Mage is more of a ranged/support class. Why do I feel like these are well know details to well versed gamers? Jesus, the combat is simply awesome! Im currently playing as a fighter and loving being right up in the thick of things. Some of the best combat I have ever seen in a fantasy game, right up there with Amular.

Fighting HUGE armored enemies is exhilarating! The battles always seem to feel different, and the enemy animations and AI are incredible. I got punched off a cliff by a troll once, totally thought I had him beat. A gang of hob goblins ambushed us and the lead guy pointed his finger at me and said “I knew we would find you, get em!!!” I haven’t seen that again, just different variations for different encounters. Now thats detail.

The graphics may look rough or pixelated sometimes, but little details like wind kicking dust up off the road or leaves fluttering across your path makes you feel immersed in the world. Not to mention sunsets and sunrises are stunning. The graphics are actually kind of charming. Night time or dusk in the streets of Gran Soren reminds of of old Disney movies. It all starts to look like an oil painting after a while.

These are just the few things I thought of off the top of my head. this is an enchanting game that admittedly starts kind of slow. Stop calling people fanboys for defending a game like this. Fanboy or not, defending great games against terrible reviews is out way of showing appreciation and hoping that similar games will be created in the future.

Well put, and I couldn’t agree with you more. This is an amazing, and challenging game.The pacing and mood are spot on. I can always find something cool and interesting to do. I have about 300 hours invested in Skyrim, and loved every minute of it,, I fully expect to equal that accomplishment with dragons dogma DA

That is all I see in these comments. It is like a multitude of toddler’s grocery store tantrums. *see attached picture for a visual example*

I for one agree with the author’s opinion about Dragon’s Dogma. I thought it was lacking in conveyance, unbalanced in enemy/player leveling, and overall generic and bland. But just because my opinion may be disagreeable by you, or anyone else that happens to feel the exact opposite way about Dragon’s Dogma than I do, it does not make me an “idiot” or “faggot” or any other “witty” names your prepubescent minds can dole out.

Saying that this author has little to no gaming skills is ridiculous. There is a thing called “preference”. Everyone has their own, even you and I. Not everyone’s preference is the same, but that does not make one’s preference correct and another wrong.

well, the guy was complaining about a fricken gate for a door to the city, he is obviously not too bright…. this game is no skyrim, but I do enjoy it, and a lot of people enjoy it, it sells an ok amount, got good reviews, so technically it can’t really be a BAD game persay…

You’d have a point if people didn’t give valid reasons as to why they’re upset about this article, but quite a few pointed out that the author was obviously playing the game wrong and whining that the game isn’t catered exactly to his playstyle. I mean when someone complains about something as simple as being killed by monsters that are obviously a much higher level (disregarding the fact that the game literally tells you that if you’re being killed too easily by monsters you should consider leveling up more), or whines about how difficult it is having all mages in his group and says it’s the game’s fault there’s an obvious issue here. He wants his hand held throughout the entire game and complains about very minor things. Considering this with a few of his other “reviews” (note he makes a point of saying this isn’t a review and there’s likely a good reason for that – because he has no business reviewing games) and it’s obvious that the author should simply avoid these types of games instead of bitch about them. I don’t like FPS games but I don’t go around bitching about how much I hate them and instead choose to not play them. He’s perfectly welcome to his opinion on the game, but when fundamental parts of an RPG are what the author complains about then he has no business discussing RPGs.

Well, some spoiled people think games have to do everything for them, and are better off playing Call of Duty and the such.

Try some Dark Souls! But no – you’d think it’s stupid just cause it’s too hard for you too.

Assassin’s Creed Black Flag has uglier faces than this game and a crap-ton of negative points about it and yet all the fanboys are all over it… so that says something about what the ‘average player’s taste in games is worth.

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion but bashing the game and calling it the worst game ever and such, the author was the one to ‘start the fight’ so there’s really no need to call the people who came to defend it out.

Dragon’s Dogma is more old school, you’re supposed to save your own game when you think you’re in danger, you’re not supposed be able to rush through and kill everything in sight right away.
Combat is fun, the pawns are great – the simple fact that they learn from you and other pawns during combat is awesome! – the story is shallow but if you do the quests properly it still feels like a giant world and you play it for many hours.

What the hell? Just because you love the game doesn’t mean it can’t be the worst game the author ever played.

I just got around to trying it from my PS+ membership and did not like it. It’s not the “worst game ever” but it’s certainly not a good game. I’m not surprised that someone that immediately mentions their love for Dark Souls would be a fan of this game. I won’t even try Dark Souls because that sounds like a chore to play it.

As for your comment, “Well, some spoiled people think games have to do everything for them…” – well, I don’t know what to say. Most people don’t play games to DO WORK. I fire up the video game console to relax and enjoy myself. If a game makes me angry or is too hard then fuck that game, it’s not worth my time. I don’t drive in hours of rush hour traffic to work and back then deal with the kids to then spend my hour of gaming time dying repeatedly to some broken ass game. Maybe that would have been fine when I was a teenager with no responsibilities and unlimited time but things change.

Rather than going on further about the absurdity of that inflammatory statement you threw out there, I’ll talk about the game itself. It looks bad. Really bad. The controls are awful. The menu system is a mess and buying/selling equipment for characters in shops is a bad experience. To make matter wosrse, it’s not like these problems haven’t been solved before, they could have simply looked at the way other games implemented this stuff. Then of course there’s the acting which is just plain bad. You could take any untrained individual off the street and have them read lines. They could do just as well. The day/night cycle is plain bad. Getting stuck at night means that you either have to try to run to town to sleep or if you’re far away you just stick yourself into a corner and go do something else until it’s daylight again. Stupid stupid stupid bad game mechanics. Hell, I had my brightness all the way up on the game as well as my TV and all the lights in my house out at night and I still couldn’t see the fucking area. Oh and Trust me, I know this is intended. That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. It’s a bad decision. When I go to play a game, the first thing I want to do is immediately stick my character into a corner, walk away and wash my fucking car while it move from night to day (/sarcasm)! Most of the quests seem to be delivered via the bounty boards. They’re as boring as you can get. It’s typical MMO “Go kill 15 boars” tropes. The few real side quests have promise at first but quickly show themselves to be nothing more than bullshit wastes of time that do nothing to develop characters into people you care about. Most of them are just escort missions anyway.

Simply put, the game isn’t fun. It’s boring as hell. If someone asked me if they should play this, I’d point them to Kingdom of Amalur. It looks a lot better and has real fighting moves in it. It’s got so much more depth and it’s faction missions are actually good. It’s got a lot of really bad missions that should be skipped but at least it has interesting parts and doesn’t look like I’m looking at a world through dirty glasses. KoA is about 50X better than Dragon’s Dogma. I can’t think of a single good RPG that Capcom has ever put out.

It’s not perfect.
The story is somewhat non-existent.
In fact, I feel that the game is unfinished, should have tried to bridge the gaps and plotholes as much as possible. So many bugs too!

But for all it’s faults, I love this game.
The combat is excellent. The pawn system is actually quite clever, and the game design is pretty good too.
If you are going to write game reviews, here’s a tip- play the game for more than 6 hours, and then we can look at your credibility.

You might wanna get ur eyes checked if you really had to do all that during the night parts… I loved KoA too, skyrim is my favorite ever, and dark souls is cool too… but I gotta say man, ur kind of an Idiot, dark souls SOUNDS like a chore? I got really frustrated with that game until I realized, OH blocking is just a lot more important, and ya a lot of the bosses are quite ridiculous at first…. but u never even tried…. dragons dogmas is almost way too easy…… all in all ITS JUST AN OPINION, and unless MOST people hate it, it gets bad reviews, and it barely sells any copies, well you really can’t back up it not being a good game

“The day/night cycle is plain bad. Getting stuck at night means that you either have to try to run to town to sleep or if you’re far away you just stick yourself into a corner and go do something else until it’s daylight again”

Some of the best, most exciting moments of my game have been at night. Your character starts out weak, but doesnt STAY weak. You level up and get better weapons/armor and nightime just becomes the chance for new, somewhst scary experiences. Level up an Assassin and, like a vampire, your character will be stronger by night than by day. Choose Magick Archer and get a bow that will target your enemies in the dark with bolts that can’t miss. The game needs patience and focus for success but it sill reward you many times over. Try again!

Wow, I read these reviews and the people writing them come off as completely insane. There are way too many people saying things like, “quit playing video games”. They think people shouldn’t be “allowed” to play video games if these people don’t like the same games that they enjoy? That’s why more than one type of video game is made. News flash to all the Skyrim haters: This game didn’t sell (literally) 1/20th of what Skyrim did because it’s nowhere near as good as Skyrim. You’re welcome to your own opinion but since you’re in the extreme minority, that means by your own logic that you should “just quit playing video games”.

At least when someone says they didn’t like Final Fantasy 13, 13-2, 13-3, the fans of those games can at least admit that those games weren’t as good as other JRPG’s and can UNDERSTAND why someone may be unhappy with the game(s). Here, the fans act like rabid dogs foaming. The kind of vitriol seen here is usually reserved for religion and politics.

wow….. i love bad reviews from people who dont know how to play agame from reading this review i come to the conclusion that you were an impatient 12 year old who couldnt read, had no patience, no initiative to learn anything about the game, when supplied with knowledge on how to play ignored it and “shot blue flaming icecubes doing no damage” when he could of been using a great deal of skills, and just sounds like you didnt even TRY to enjoy the game you just turned it on to look at nod your head slowly and say YEAP! done….. its a bad game…. you should really try harder to enjoy a game i mean SURE the story line isnt the best if you got past that and attempted to make ANY progress AT ALL you would have really enjoyed the game as countless many still do on a daily basis. i mean maybe just maybe if you even payed a little attention during the game you would have learned alot more about it and understood the choices and decisions made by your charecter as expected from the admittedly hollow story with many plot holes, but thats not the point, the point is this review is half baked under seasoned and you shoulds try again at the game and PAY ATTENTION. so in the end this is nothing more but some guys rage at something he didnt take the time to learn about or even care.
EDIT: i also thought it was hilarious you posted pictured about the greater moments in dragons dogma like you played it all the way but we know you didnt….. but seriously it sounded like you were expecting the game to wipe your ass for you

Although some of what was said is true about the game, a lot is not. I respect your opinion about the game, but seriously, why so much harrassment? The character cant speak=Crap game. The pawns
talk too much=Crap game. I keep getting killed=Crap game. That
is not true. The reason for these is that you are not playing the game
to the full extent. You keep getting killed because you have not
purchased or upgraded any armor, the starting clothes will get you
no where. And the reason you cant kill anyone is because you
obviously didnt pay attention to the tutorial at the start. You need to press
a certain button to access primary and secondary attacks (or in your case,
spells). The magic bolts are useless unless you have a good staff, enchanted
or not. So if you would have actually paid attention to what the game has to say, and actually done some exploring, or maybe used some of that stuff called gold, that is actually used for something, e.g. buying weapons and armor, then you would have gotten a lot more out of the game, instead of rage quitting because you rushed into the game too quick. I am now on New Game +++ (If you have completed the game, you will know what I mean, if not, that means i’m on my fourth run through of the game) and I am lvl 76, and there is still loads I havent done on any of my run throughs. If anyone disagrees with this, I dont care, this is how I feel about someone writing a review for a game, that they said was absolute crap, just because they didnt know what they were doing.

Your welcome, Dragons Dogma just gets so much abuse and it does not deserve this. It is by far the best Fantasy RPG i have ever played, which shows due to my completing the game five times. By the way, what console do you play on? Could trade pawns?

Ok, lets begin with this statement: “The story is basically non-existent” are you stupid? you barely played it and you complain about the story? The story isn’t perfectly clear at the start BECAUSE PART OF THE FUN OF THE GAME IS PUTTING TOGETHER THE SCRAPS OF INFORMATION THAT IT GIVES YOU! I can spend three hours explaining the story to you if you’d like.

Next: “Combat is the dullest and most infuriating i’ve ever experienced” This game has the best combat of any RPG in the world. This comment may be related to your continuous deaths. Because you suck at the game does not mean that is has bad combat.

“There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour” There are hundreds of different weapons and pieces of armor to choose from.

“The pawns may as well be robots” Yes, pawns SUCK at low levels, when you get to level 40 or so, you’ll need them, and they will be very helpful.

“I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health” Are you joking. Wakestones revive you when you die, Items will boost your stats, cure poison, torpor, sleep, and many other debilitations, things can double gold and exp got from killing enemies and the most useful is the ones that restore stamina, YOU NEED STAMINA TO SURVIVE.

I cannot be bothered telling you whats wrong with the other statements so i will just tell you the ONE that you got right: “Voice acting is generic and annoying” Correct! I hate the voice acting, luckily, with the Dark Arisen Expansion you can change it to Japanese voices which is much MUCH better.

Please explain this to me. I just played the game, and after defeating that first big baddie to prove you are the “arisen” to that weird rock I just quit the game in rage.

All I did is repeatedly press square to launch lame little balls for like, for 5 minutes, and that’s it, he fallen and I won. So, please, explain me, how this cannot be the worst RPG I played in my entire life?

You played the Mage. The support character. Play a warrior or stick with mage till you get Sorcerer. Or even better: An hybrid class. Shit get awesome then.

The first big baddie, so im guessing the ogre. The one they use has a tutorial…. He’s on the verge of dead when you meet him with seriously restrained AI so the player can learn a bit. Later in game you meet a real ogre. He will pound your arse to the ground. no shame. Same for the Hydra. One head cut off? Bitch please.

Its a game unlike many RPG has it dont hold you be the hand to show you all its wonder. You got to find those. There are many and all worth the look. That’s why people are reminded of Dark Soul.

Thanks! I’m playing as a magic archer now and is much more fun. Well, it doesn’t have all those ultra mega spells that are fun to watch, but gameplay is much more dynamic and fun.

I was ambushed by a hydra and it gave me a lot of trouble to defeat it.. But I have one concern. I can’t get near powerful monsters to climb them without getting killed. The Hydra killed me almost instantly if I got close, and I think I’m maybe losing part of the fun of the game because of it.

For starters, I can’t find a dodge button, like Dark Souls, for example. And I don’t know if it’s a FPS issue in the ps3 version, or it’s a cognitive deficiency in me, but I can’t see or can’t dodge some moves from these big monsters. Somehow it doesn’t feel precise like Dark Souls, where you could face a one hit death monster and survive, if you study enough his moves

I feel your pain…Dark souls spoiled me with invincibility frames and the only character that has any real dodge capability is the assassin in DD. Also, if you’re having problems with health you may want to level as a different class for awhile. Each class has different stat growths per level.

Dude, there are always stupid plot points and things that just don’t add up In games and in practically EVERY STORY ANY ONE MAKES UP SINCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME…. you made me chuckle and I agreed about the bit when the one guy is running at the dragoon, and it takes his heart yet he lives just fine without it…. but you really wanna complain about the fricken GATE to the city???? you are such a lame idiot man, get a life…. and I would never play a video game, read a book, or watch a movie EVER again in your life if I were you

And this game is WAY TOO EASY if you are having problems, ummm, you must be retarded, and that’s being nice… if you have ever played an rpg, this is possibly the easiest one I have ever played, it only has a normal and easy mode for christs sake

I partly agree with this, the game does actually have a pretty decent learning curve. Once you get the hang of it it’s not to bad. The real difficulty of the game is in Bitterblack Isle though. But the first few hours of the game can be pretty rough. The game does have a hard mode, but I guess that might only be in the Dark Arisen version.

Other commenters, please stop citing Dark Souls. This big piece of crap isn’t nothing near bad RPGs I played in the past, so it’s like a whole universe below Dark Souls in terms of gameplay.

I got it for free in PS+, after some hours playing it I couldn’t stand it anymore. It’s just so damn easy and dumb. Keep hitting the square button and easily avoid the monster and boom, he is dead, after some incredibly boring minutes…

I turned off all voices and subtitles, as well as the HUD; I also only played with my Main Pawn, without the two extra hires. My game experience had a clear screen, no repeating voice clips, and an improved framerate. I’m sure Cody will find he is good at something, so keep trying little buddy! Reviewing is a tough nut to crack! <3 for your efforts thus far, mwah!!

well it seems you didnt realize there are 2 main attacks + 3 special attacks (by pressing R1) + 3 alternative attacks or supportive moves (by pressing L1) on every character. You can learn and choose a lot of this special attacks not to mention grabbings, climbing attacks, jumping attacks, etc. Then again you have a lot of moves inherent to your class that you can permanently use by combining buttons. so when you say you just can hit and shoot some magic balls (triangle and square buttons respectively) it means you suck at playing this, nothing more

This reviewer has either never played RPGs, or is just a dipshit, or paid to dislike the game.

Only flaw I notice is the lack of fast travel. Otherwise the combat is crazy good, blows away next-gen combat today 😀 great combos etc, grabbing onto bosses! who else does that ?! Feels badass. Story and quest guidance system is shitty, but this game blows away the RPG genre with the combat and pawn system, so I’m fine with looking past that 😀

Lack of fast travel? Ferrystones. And you can use portcrystals to literally place a warp point to anywhere in the game wordl you want. Now in the original version they were 20k but they were reduced to 2k in Dark Arisen though. I personally thought the story was great, and after I beat NG+ it all just made so much more sense and really blew me away. The cycle continues.

Guess Skyrim sucked too? I mean, let’s see. You commented on the story. I found Skyrim’s story dull and stupid, but still enjoyed playing it because of the RPG realm I got to explore while doing it. Skyrim also had a follower mechanic, like pawns only fewer and optional. I have only played the demo of Dragons Dogma, and I plan on going out tomorrow to buy it. The combat is fluent, fun, and feels more personal side you actually have to try to land your blows rather than auto hitting your target, or swinging and hitting it when you are no where near it. The chimera fight WAS AMAZING. I questioned whether I was doing damage to it as well, but then I shrugged and continued to climb into its ball sack and chop away while dying of laughter. After I created my character (Blonde elf strider) I quickly began throwing everyone in sight just for a good laugh. The only gripe (mind you, I only played the demo) is there weren’t enugh monsters. But in the full game I am sure there are more. I often questioned whether my hits were doing ANYTHING but then I realized I was enjoying the game way too much to even care. At night, it got REALLY dark and gave the game this spooky aspect as I ran along the beach in the firelight of my lamp with my band of fuckwads as they rambled on about ores in stones, or how the water would drench me if I got too close. It’s not EASY but its not HARD. Its just RIGHT. I feel like I am on edge in every battle, but I still feel like I have a chance. The save thing is annoying, but it only takes a few second to pause and save the game when you feel it is crucial.

If anyone is reading this, and they are considering GETTINF the game, I tell you, don’t listen to ANY review. Read and listen to them, understand the flaws, and when you do ask yourself if they are minor or major to YOU. This game is fun, and I like it almost MORE than I do skyrim. I love grinding games, so I feel right at home here. And when I am not slaughtering golins, wolves, or bandits, I am tossing wonder I travelers down into the murky depths below and waving bonvoyage to their skulls as they… you get the idea,

This reviewer did a bad job, and obviously hasn’t played anything besides point and click games or COD games (not hating on COD, I play it too). Try the demo before you even think to listen to a reviewer, because only you can decide what YOU enjoy.

“The story is nonexistant”
Clearly didn’t get far into the story then. The story is explained in pieces over the course of the game and all comes together after you defeat the Seneschal and then it REALLY comes together after you finish ng+ which takes like 20 additional minutes because you are armed to the teeth and OP by that point.

“Combat is the dullest and most infuriating I’ve ever experienced”
So you don’t like RPG combat? Because the combat is about the same as every good RPG ever made, including the Final Fantasy series but much more active and real time. It’s an RPG what the fuck did you expect the combat to do like? Also, clearly has never played an Elder Scrolls game, if you want the worst combat system ever made look no further.

“Save spots are too far apart, so I was saving after anything that even resembled a fight”
So the time it takes it hit start then select/back is too long a time and “distance” between save points. Okay. Seems legit. You can save this game more often than Dark Souls auto saves you so choose.

“There’s barely any customization for my weapons and armour”
Again, have you ever actually played an RPG? Each class has different armor and weapons they can equip, in the original version of the game there are 457 pieces of armor and even more added in Dark Arisen. And there are dozens of weapon selections for each class.

“The map is close to useless”
I don’t even know what to say to this. It has all the markers you need, tells you where entrances are to anything, tells you where switches are, dead ends are, you can make custom markers, have quest markers, tells you where stores are, your pawns are, you are. Tells you the region you are in, region names of other locations aroudn the world. I mean have you ever actually looked at a map before? It even shows you where roads are for god’s sake.

“Traveling anywhere takes forever”
You can go from one side of the map to the other in from a single mornign to night. And when you get there you can place a portcystal to warp back with a ferrystone at time you want. Maybe if you knew how maps worked it wouldn’t take you so long.

“The Pawns may as well be robots”
Pawns are beings that have no will, you can actually train them to have different inclinations to determine how they act, making them the most versatile and potentially useful companion ever made in a game. being able to completely control how they act, fight, and whether they support or dps. If you actually paid attention to the game and stuff blatantly told to you you would understand that pawns are useless at first because they have not been trained and their AI hasn’t developed yet, but in higher levels they understand how to fight enemies, bosses, and even your own play style and fight in a way to compliment that play style. It’s kind of the whole point, and it’s more explained after you beat the game too.

“I found no use for picking up anything that didn’t simply restore my health”
So you made it to Gran Soren did a few basic board quests and then gave up is what this tells me. When you actually continue the game you start finding enemies that give all kinds of status effects to you and your pawns, so you need items to cure those, restore stamina, buff your damage, give more exp, money, etc. Next time try that strategy going through Bitterblack Isle and let me know how well it works out for you when you keep getting cursed and petrified and can’t deal damage to enemies.

“The graphics are surprisingly bad”
Did you play the game through component or av or something? Try not using a tube TV and buy yourself a 1080p screen and using an hdmi cable. The game looks better than most console games do and is only really out done by the most recent games because the newer games are pushing the consoles to their absolute limits. Also the game doesn’t have 1080p or 2k or 4k textures so of course it looks a bit low res because ITS A CONSOLE GAME NOT A PC GAME you idiot. And any higher textures the game wouldn’t be able to run, the game can already barely handle the particle effect of higher level spells, it lags from some heal spells and god help you if you try to be a mystic knight.

“The text is too bloody small. I was constantly ‘see-sawing’ on my chair just to read”
Again, get an hdmi cable and stop playing on a fucking tube TV. Also I would very highly recommend going to an eye doctor.

“The voice acting is generic and annoying”
I play Dark Arisen version and use Japanese voices so I couldn’t tell you, but the Japanese voices sound great.

“Villages and towns look lifeless”
Still livelier and bigger than most RPGs, and part of the reason for it is because the game populates itself with random npc and player pawns wandering around. And consoles actually have trouble processing that many AI’s at once so villages and towns can’t have too many people in them. Learn something about how technology works please.

“Enemies are monumentally durable”
maybe if you use rusted weapons, don’t pay attention stats or weaknesses, sure it’s tough. But I can tell you right now, when you actually pay attention and take the time to learn weaknesses, elemental weaknesses and weak points you will kill literally every enemies in a matter of seconds.

“Objectives are incredibly boring, if there are any”
Objectives and quests are pretty similar to every RPG ever made. You’ve concluded you either have an extreme bias against RPGs, or you were paid to hate the game, or you might just be retarded. Can’t tell which. Like is this the first RPG you have ever played or something? I swear to god if you have a 5 star review of Skyrim sitting around somewhere then you clearly were paid to like it and paid to hate this and your “opinion” means nothing.

Next time actually do a bit of research when playing a game, some games have a high learning curve and unless you actually beat the game the opinion doesn’t mean much because it’s like looking at a small portion of a painting and saying, eh I don’t like it and then just ignore the rest of it.

I agree with everything you said. This game is miserable. Combats are ridiculously long and monotonous. Character interaction is bland. Dialogue is non-existent. Story is insipid. Your review brought out the “look how awesome I am” crowd, who aren’t going to say anything except “you suck at games” and “I’m great because I like this hard game”. Don’t listen to them. You are 100% right.

The game has long combats because it would take a long time to take down large beasts in real life. Especially in those time periods and making a general assumption that everyone on here thinks they are better than you or others who play the game is wrong. the interaction grows the more you interact with the game. If you play the story through you can understand it, unlike the man who wrote the review. Most games dont have extremely complex dialogue. Not everyone has something different to say. But it would take a large amount of time to put in a thousand different things for each person to say. There are definitely people who have given counter points to many of the article writers ideas of the game, such as B33b3. He has written a detailed report of his counter arguments that i agree with. Even though he may have bashed at him a little. It shouldnt be hard to see the main points.

I tried Dragons Dogma and for me, it was one of the worst games, I ever played, becaus I choose the Strider. Then, I tried again with the fighter, and it was much more fun, but still not a great game for me.
It bothered me, that i took so long to kill anything, nerly 30 hits for one Goblin and erverytime I got hit, I fell down. But I didn`t find the fights that hard, more annoying, because of these things.
For me, Dark Souls is much better, Dragons Dogma has bad Graphics and the enemies can take to much damage, so fights last like a million years and the world is kinda boring at the beginning, nothing compared with the dark atmosphere of the Dark Souls Games. And it bothered me, that I can’t directly control my vasalls. In my opinion, BG, a much older game does everything better. DD also has some very stupid dialogues, later it’s okay, but the beginning of the game feels kinda dumb.
To be fair, DD can be fun, I can understand, why someone likes it, the boss battles are funny, animation looks great (but the inviroment doesen’t), voices are good, some fights are fun. But it’s not nearly as great as some other Fantasy games. But compared to Monster Hunter, which one I hate, it’s a great game. DD is not really bad, but there are so many things, the could have done better
Just my opinion.

Hey guys im natalie and have such a shitty life with no friends that all i do is sit on my comp and correct another individuals spelling. Lady you ever corrected me in public youd get my boot thru your teeth. Oh and have fun with the grammer errors on mine becaaaaause……i really dont give a flying fuck who spells what wrong. People like you who pop in for one comment like that need to have your neck stepped on and your parents questioned why the pillow was taken off your face, id honestly like to know why they took it off as well

Almost forgot…..goddamn your a dumb cunt…i read half your other posts and are you challenged mentally in some way? Because it really seems like you are and i may feel kind bad for cussing a tard. So is it brain damage?

Oh no butt hurt is an understatment and also a word ive only heard used by little kids 19 and under soooooo thanks for proving my point you actually saved me some typing. Anyways you had no point to correct them, Get your ass out in public go up to the next big bitch you see go talk to her and if she prononces something wrong then you damn well better correct her! Or are you our usual coward behind a keyboard? Oh man im gonna have a blast shitting on you everytime you correct someone on here for now on. Your not gonna like it just like people dont like your dumb as correcting them. Hope you enjoy my shitty ass spelling since i dont care. Looooooove you:)

“You saved me some typing” he says, then he writes an essay. I don’t see how I’m a ‘coward behind a keyboard’ when all I did was correct someone, and you’re the one being abusive. Damn kids these days.

Lovely. Children arguing. It brings joy to my heart.
Thank you for correcting someone’s spelling Natalie. But the snarky comment afterwords is what set off the obvious internet troll. That, or he/she is just a complete asshole. They do seem like kind of an asshole. They will comment on the cowardice of your internet anonymity while they hide behind uninspired screen names like “kill the grammar troll”.To note, not that it matters, that was a spelling mistake not a grammatical error.
By the way kids, this is a case of cyberbullying: a federal offense. If Natalie so desired she could bring this forward and prosecute. It could even be tried as an assault. My point: don’t do it. Now should the passing troll read this, they will most likely comment back with a taunting comment or statement on “how much they dont give a fuck and how im a retard”. That’s natural troll chest puffing. Don’t give it any thought. Instead of arguing with an abusive asshole do what I plan on doing. Ignore the tool. Answering only feeds his ego. And rule number fourteen of the internet clearly states: Do not argue with trolls-it means that they win.

Who paid your for this review? owo or are you that ignorantly bad at rpgs? God… the story may seem difficult to catch at the very beggining, but play the game and you will find it out, a brilliant one. Press R1/L1 for skills. being a mage to start is surely a bad choice since they are weak defense. thats something you should know for every game int he world xD. Try another classes. there are 9 to try. And use the money you got for the review to get Dark Souls and then write another review. Greetings.

Let’s just get it out of the way. I think we can all admit, both those who love the game and those who hate it, but seriously the storyline in DD sucks. I personally love the game. I’ve played it several times as several vocations. From my pure assassin who wrecks everything, to my sorcerer who wrecks everything except golems. Damn golems…Sorry, I got sidetracked.

I like to believe that the creators took a similar approach to the story as dark souls did. They don’t put you on train rails and speed you through the story and to the end. They want you to figure shit out on your own. They want you to fill in the gaps and come up with your characters motivation for doing what he’s doing, on your own. And I have to say, I think they could have done better. English voice acting was lacking and my first playthrough was filled with ‘Wtf am I supposed to do?’ moments. There were no sincerely touching moments and in the end they made me into a pedophile with symone…Don’t get me wrong, I laughed my ass off when she started doing that stupid ass run away from the dragon but come on. Next playthrough I still didn’t figure it out and ended up in the muscly embrace of Pablo the innkeeper…That was going too far game.

But realistically the character interaction IS lacking. The underlying story is deep and the concept is fantastic I just wish it could have come across a little better. I mean seriously, it blew my mind when I figured out the entire cycle and the futility of your actions up to that point. I was like ‘Shit, There is no happy ending…’. Which I like, haha. Still I wish it had come across better.

And…I really don’t want to assume this but…You did know to press the bumpers right? Because It kind of sounds like you were just mashing X…If so, then more power to you! Also, Nothing in the starting game can really two shot you…besides the fact that you should learn to dodge. Dark souls can teach you that lesson well.

Its a good game. I hope they make another and its even better than the first.

To the writer of this review… You lost all credibility when you said Grigori (The dragon) speaks some unintelligible language. Don’t write another review until you know what the hell you are talking about because that is Latin… Please read this comment… PLEASE

you’re a fucking retard if you really think this is the worst game ever. get your facts straight before calling a game bad, you just went on and on about how you can’t get into the combat and some more stupid shit. this is literally the worst review i’ve ever read, now go kill yourself.

WoW…. how you can tell that is worst game ever ? This is probably only game you have ever played… the graphics isn’t perfect but still playable… and in my opinion the combat is one of the best in RPG games I’ve ever seen, cause it’s action and with so many skills and vocation you can build your own character just as you want… and yes, start isn’t best cuz firstly you will have no chance even againist fakin’goblins.. but after a few hours you will be much stronger but if u want good RPG game which is easier go and play Skyrim on lowest difficult option… and yes I must say that what you told about the story is true but still better than for example DS… and do you know what ? THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST RPG IN THE WORLD you can compere it even with such great games like TES series or Dragon Age series or Dark Souls… and now, go and kill your self honey 🙂

Wow this dude must be the ultimate failure at rpgs. Explore? Why should i? Because its an rpg!! Stop playing this type of game if thats your attitude moron. And honestly u used dark messiah to compair so i am going to assume your mentally impaired in some way. And you felt stupider after? thats just impossible in your case. The subject title should have stated “Im a bitch and couldnt beat the bandits on easy mode in dogma so now im gonna be a coward and say the games broken”, because it obviously is broken if your not good at it right? By you saying you shut off the consol and started writting this right away it more then proves my point. My only advise. Give up on all rpgs now and forever, they arnt ment for yoy and are all apparently to hard and comlicated for you

I’m sorry that was one of the more pathetic excuses for journalism I have ever read. I don’t care that you didn’t like the game or whether or not you’re good at it, what is truly sad is the fact that not only was your blatant lack of understanding of even the most simple concepts pitiful but the fact that you apparently didn’t pay any attention whatsoever to what was happening within the world that you’re supposedly trying to review.

About your “Ehhhhhhhhh……”
-You are already stupid for saying this game sucks
-If you pay attention then the story is actually played to be more free roam so you don’t just focus on it like I do in some games
-The combat of the game is mostly about strategy and knowing how to defeat the enemy with what skills you have
-The game has auto-save feature that you probably were too busy dying to notice
-I can’t customize my armor in Skyrim..doesn’t mean it is a bad game does it?
-You have to explore to make the map useful, this is to get you more involved in the game and have fun
-If you play long enough, you understand the shortest ways to get somewhere and you eventually get portcrystals to help
-The pawns can be more useful than what you actually think (in this case they are better than the player)
-if you don’t want to carry something that has value…than you aren’t going to get shit for money
-Battlefield doesn’t have near the graphics of Call of Duty, and yet it is even better. My point saying that the graphics in this game are just where they need to be
-There is a thing called audio so you don’t have to read the captions…so uhm…turn the volume up
-Voice-acting…..hmmmm…didn’t know every person in the game needed their own actor to play them all
-Lifeless towns…WELL DUH…would you be all happy and celebrating with a huge ass dragon on the loose?
-Durable enemies is what makes the game fun, no one wants pushovers to fight
-Objectives being boring is a part of every single game…at one point in time…there is one sole part that is a wee bit boring to the rest
You sir just wouldn’t know a spectacular game, even if it did what your girlfriend did to you, and slap you in the face.

6 hours??? you didn’t even get to the starting point of appreciation…out of Skyrim, Dragons Age, Reckoning, my favs, Dragons Dogma wins out as the best…I played with it for two years on and off before I started to realize the depth and quality there…too bad you didn’t get there…

lol… I laughed when you said ” Pawns ain’t human -. they are just people”…… At least you did get far to almost meet the Duke.
Anyways seems like you only like pressing buttons… This is indeed one of the best game ever played – storywise – combat – system. Something I think I’ve always dream of.

Just because you are bad at a game and don’t know how to play it doesn’t mean you get to pass judgement on the quality of said game. If you don’t like this type of game, don’t play it, and don’t review it. I don’t like blowjobs from men, but I’m not going to judge your dicksucking capabilities because I am already biased against you.

“Firstly, isn’t a Hydra supposed to have some kind of water theme, not just be a bunch of snakes on one body?” I re-read the article to give you a fair chance, and then I caught this little gem. I think it fully illustrates the complete lack of effort or research you put into cranking this garbage out to meet deadline, or whatever your motivation is, because it clearly isn’t a passion for games and providing unbiased reviews so consumers can make informed decisions. Take this crap back to your livejournal.

“On a side note, to exit my village I had to walk up and push B on a closed gate. A CLOSED gate. That is so unintuitive. Why would I assume a closed gate would lead me out? A door I can understand since it can be opened and closed easily by one person. But this is a portcullis. Anyway, moving on.”

Pardon my language but… For F’ing Sakes, what do you expect? Of course there’s going to be a closed gate at the exit/entrance to the town. Has anyone on this planet ever seen the entrance to a Town or city being a regular house door? How on gods green earth would large supplies or carts or such ever enter or exit a large town if they would have to go through a regular door? This isn’t a house or a building… This is a town surrounded with Walls for crying sake. You can bet your whole life’s worth there will be a gate and not a door in any world (be it video games or reality).
And of course the gates going to be CLOSED and NOT OPEN. Why would the gates ever be open for people to just leave and enter the town at their will? An open gate would bring in people/creatures that may harm the town and it’s people. It needs to be closed to protect the entire town from danger. And when someone wants to enter or leave they would have to check in the front so the guards whom are guarding the gates open it for those to be eligible to leave and or enter.

I’m sorry if I sounded harsh! But the paragraph that I just went over doesn’t merit this article readable. This article was bad in general, but that paragraph shows this author lacking common knowledge about how the world works.

Sigh… Never seen or heard of someone being so shocked about large towns/cities (especially those with large walls surrounding the town/city like in the game) having gates and not regular house or building doors. Nonetheless he is even more shocked that gates exits/entrances are closed. Of course they’ll be closed until you check in the front so the guards are able to deem that it’s safe enough to open the gates for you to leave/enter… The front gate guards need it closed to prevent any harm from entering the town at free will (in this case Goblins, chimeras, etc etc) smart one.

I am very biased as i loved this game but who writes a review before getting even halfway through a game boo hoo you had six hours in it unless you beat the game there is no real point in even writing a review so why waste the time.

dang. it’s in my list (well incomplete list, LOL) of top 5 RPG’s of last gen (b/c i didn’t really think about it. (but to name 3 without a doubt on the list, not in order): Dragon’s Dogma, Fallout 3, TES4: Oblivion,

Thats what I thought at first, but after tinkering around and getting better at char editor, and getting some levels in, it is my favorite game of all: irt skyrim, dragon age, kingdoms of amalur as my next 3..

It has some major frustrations but it has good points as well. Being a mage or sorcerer in this game is way too boring. I hate it. And in the beginning you have to almost run past some of the bad guys like one shot bowman bandits. That’s awful but later they are cake to kill. The graphics are good in ways but bad in others. I think things like shade are excellent. Breezes look great. But they have low resolution or something like that. It really ruins it because often it looks very close to black and white. It needs more saturation I think to beef up those colors. The land is boring. Play it a while and it’s a tedious chore. They really should have added more towns a bit like cassardis. Even cassardis has more going for it than their major city which is a joke if ever there was one.

The pawns are pretty amazing though they suck at first. Why? Capcom idiocy. You see pawns have to learn and that’s why they say things over and over. It lets you know what they know and they foes (bestiary) all have different ways to attack them and different ways they attack you that the pawns need to learn. So as the pawns learn they gain knowledge stars which is really fun but also really hellish tedium because capcom decided to keep some if these bits very elusive and thus you have to grind and try different tactics to gain that third knowledge star. They didn’t make it straight forward, but once your pawn gains more and more knowledge it gets very good at fighting enemies. You need to expose it to different vocations (either you playing them or it playing them or the pawns you rent – always look for pawns with decent knowledge in the rift and good inclinations as well – this is some of the really important game changing stuff as bad inclinations for certain vocations on a pawn make it awful just like it is kind of dumb when it starts but as it learns it gets better).

There are nuances in this game that really make it something awesome, a true gem in the rough. But there are also things that are glaringly bad like the very boring open world and the very sub par quest line. The reason I really love it is that I love my pawns. I have multiple characters under different GTs and each is a specific build type with a specific pawn build type. Very fun to switch back and forth and hire other pawns you made to run with you. I have to say I really love it. Maybe one day you might feel like giving it another chance. Pay more attention to the pawns and how to tackle the enemies. Pick a class like strider or fighter right off and learn some basic ways to protect yourself like shield blocks and roll or double jumps. Mage is the worst class in my opinion as it sort of stunlocks for spells which is absurd.

This person obviously has played next to no RPGs, this article could be summed up as “I don’t like RPGs”, This Game is known for fun combat its not the most in depth but it is certainly fun, you sound like you just kept doing regular attack when your six weapon skills you pick are what you should be using. And of course you die easily, you are a mage. You are supposed to save when you want to there are no points in the game except for in or encampments if you count them. The game is not difficult in any way, i can kill the red dragon in less than 20 seconds and it has 12 health bars, if anything it is too easy. Never once do i remember having a hard time finding an objective, there is a huge ass orange circle on the map and there are very few branching pathways. You complain about not knowing what is going on in the story but you only played the very begging of the game, that’s like reading only the first chapter of a mystery novel and complaining because they didn’t give you clues on you commit ed the crime and why they did it. This is quite honestly one of the worst articles I have ever read, there are plenty of real flaws in this game but you didn’t manage to hit a single one.

There are a lot of comments saying what I want to, so I won’t go on into why this article is wrong for the sake of redundancy, but lol..

Dude just play the game again. Pick a different vocation, boot the difficulty down to easy and just go with it. I recommend something with melee, there’s a lot of fun to be had there. (I mean, scaling enemies? How can you beat that.)

Like anything else, Dragon’s Dogma has flaws, but it is by no means a horrible game..
Definitely not deserving to settle on some botched list of “worst games”, or so definitively on a crap “article”.

Learn how to play before writing a “review”.. This is so poorly done it’s nigh infuriating.

The author is a sad little man. Dragon’s Dogma is an amazing rpg with such a rich interesting world (which is getting two more sequels) and has taken its place in the hall of legendary rpgs. Skyrim is shit compared to this game.

You say the customization was bad? Get the dlc and say that.
You say there’s very few save spots? Its called a pause and save. Learn not all games hold your hand and let you make everything up perfectly.
Items useless? Try combining them next time.
The enemies are meant to be durable. They’re supposed to be a challenge.

You say Bioshock was bad? You’re probably just bad at it.
Red Dead Redemption was bad? You’re on crack.
M&M:DM was bad? It is a classic masterpiece of rpgs. Literal god tier game.

Dragon’s Dogma is a rough game. That’s a truth even fans have to accept. The project was almost too large, and it suffers in the realm of polish. It also does have a relatively “generic” game world, though in part this is due to the game quite literally trying to be the Dungeons & Dragons action-RPG. It’s all there, right down to the bestiary.

That said, this review does read like a long list of every unpolished part of the game, by a player who didn’t really get what the game was supposed to be doing. Dragon’s Dogma does not hold your hand. In fact, it holds it even less than the infamous Souls games. It’s tough for a good reason, and does in fact give the player a lot to work with. But it is a game that provides you with what you put into it – put no effort into understanding it, and you’ll get nothing out of it.

If ever there was a game that was far more than the sum of its parts, it is Dragon’s Dogma. That much is for sure. It would be a very confusing game however, to younger game players who have primarily grown up in the Xbox 360 era, where most large triple-A games are designed to funnel the player down a simple path – even in open worlds – mean to not let them fail, and insure they are entertained regardless of how much effort they put in. It has much in common with old school PC RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, which challenges the player to survive a harsh and unknown world from the very start.

I agree with your assessment. This game certainly has some flaws and areas that could have been improved upon, but overall, is a very enjoyable game of you’re willing to put some effort into it. The “author” of this article is clearly some xbox fanboy that has no knowledge of D&D or what a challenging RPG entails.

Lol. Plays for 6 hours “game is too hard, I feel like I’m doing no damage!” Ok sure, they’ll give you a full abyssal set from level 1 for no reason whatsoever, so you can start the game, and kill the dragon the first time you encounter it on the beach. GG, game over in less than 15 minutes.
You get out of the game what you put into it, I’ve spent over 100+ hours playing and I still love running through the Bitterblack Isles. “What’s that?” You ask. Well if you played for more than 6 hours and actually reached the end game, you’d know. As for the story, everything gets revealed last minute. From start to end you kinda just follow through levelling up and slaying big ass monsters.
And the notes at the end “Enemies are monumentally durable”. If you were to firstly: Play the game for more than 6 hours, and secondly: Not suck at the game. You’d find they’re perfectly fine.
Level 60+ Sorc, cast High Gicel, oh no. Chimera dead already.

PS: Died to Chimera at the start? Lol, good job you quit. Hahahaha. Never play games like this again.
PPS: Also noticed this: “The goat head is pretty useless…” as a caption for the Chimera photo. Lol, you do realise the goats head is what spams magic on you? Hahahaha.

I didn’t have to read all of it to know you hate it just because you suck at it. Chimeras are one of the easiest enemies to kill. The dragon? The MAIN dragon is not the size of a car. I mean its fuckin huge! The one you get to fight during the game when you just run around might be a dragon also (can’t remember right now) but I’m pretty sire it was a drake which are suppose to be smaller. The sword and shield you talked about in the beginning along with doing no damage. Are you retarded? Yes they are slow as shit but warriors are tanky and they do a lot of damage while wearing the appropriate things. Try playing the game and stop bitching when it doesn’t immediately rub your head, give you a cookie, and tell you what a good job you’re doing like your mommy does.

I feel that perhaps this author is more used to the “This game is a novel you get to watch with no choices whatsoever” kind of game like Final Fantasy. It’s an open world game which means no one is going to hold your hand and give you specific directions for what to do next. You need to take initiative.

A very uneducated opinion of the game… I’ve been playing for a while and was yelling out in anger at the misconceptions, misinterpretations and even grammar mistakes throughout this poorly written… I don’t even know what to call it. For example, pawns do not come out of the sky, they come from a different dimension. Many incorrect assumptions were made. Worst game you’ve ever played? Well this is the worst (whatever this is) I’ve ever read

Playing only 6 hours of this game and calling that the “full experience” is like only playing Dark Souls for 6 hours and calling that game awful because all you do is escape a prison and run up some stairs. Playing as a mage in Dragon’s Dogma and in Dark Souls is just not as exciting. If the author of this article would have played for more that 6 hours as a Fighter or Strider and not been such a close-minded prick he probably would have had fun.

You seem as if you don’t play enough to find things out and are too lazy in gaming to try. I feel as if you’re completely ignorant if them actually explaining it. Meet the Dragonforged, then we’ll talk. Also, NEVER judge games on graphics. Look at Oblivion. One of the best TES games, next to Morrowind. I absolutely hate when people complain about graphics. It makes you think that they only judge by sight and don’t look for anything else. I play games for characterisation and lore, which is why I hate Ninja Theory for absolutely ruining Dante from DMC. Sorry about my rambling but graphics aren’t something you can complain about, unless it’s a change, made in a sequel, of a character or place, et cetera, that you can’t stand. This just makes you seem like a definitive asshole because you complain about things that you haven’t given any time to improve in the next one.

I seriously consider that this kind of reviews should be done by actual gamers with reputation and not some whacky dude who is paid per word. I understand his frustration with this game, but his inability to objectively judge is non existent. Obviously RPGs are not his thing, so why even bother.

Lol, what a complete doofus this ‘reviewer’…..worst game he ever played….pfffrt.

Should have stuck in there mate, this game is absolutely great, one that has been under the radar of many I’m afraid.
The perfect game for hack and slashers who aren’t into that many hardcore rpg’s….a step-up maybe.

Pay no attention to this review, this ‘gamer’ couldn’t be more off. Bite into this, hold on for the first hours and you’ll probably love it.

I really hope this is a side gig for you. The item/armor customization is pretty extensive later on in the game. I feel bad that people are being pretty harsh to you, but a lot of your criticisms come off as petty/whiny and half thought out/uninformed. I do agree with your one point about slapping a ton of health on an enemy being lazy game design though. I am going to avoid this site all together in the future because I would hardly consider this the “best review” I have read about the game which has nothing to do with the subjectivity of your opinion and everything to do with claims about the game that you make that are objectively inaccurate.

Reading this review made me so sad. I love Dragon’s Dogma because of how it handles consoles so well.

I can tell Capcom wanted very hard to make a medieval game with real fantasy. The colors are natural, and the voices are natural. It is cute how they try to stick to medieval language patterns a bit, especially with the overused “aught”. Gransys accents are British with a “French”-speaking country nearby. It is a welcomed difference from many “medieval” games where everyone has bright dyes and armor and can hop up and adventure safely from age 10. You are a little villager in a little village in a world with all this religious description of an Arisen that matches you perfectly. Another Arisen is the current duke, so it is a huge deal for your little boy! Of course you are weak, inexperienced, and ill-prepared for a journey across the country on foot. It’s insane to do that, honestly, but you are able to reach the capital through your tactics and lots of running away.

When you get there, you are given into the leadership of another Arisen, Duke Edmund. He knows much more about this dragon business than you. He gives you all this distracting busy work out of fear you will end his reign as the great, proven (but actually ineffective) Arisen. You dutifully go about his business because serving the Duke and visiting the castle is awesome and fighting the dragon is so scary. Eventually, you do, and you learn what the Neon Genesis Evangelion pseudo-religious toodeep4u setting. It boils down to a cycle where you interact and succeed your own characters in a satisfying and sometimes amusing way, using save data.

Really, the story does not follow a “The Chosen One” trope. You see the dragon and fight out of temporary insanity, a desperate attempt to save Quinoa and your village, or a total disconnect with the reality of how wimpy you are. Therefore, the dragon takes your heart and commissions you to find him. You decide to take steps to find him. When you meet him, you succeed or fail of your own merit. If you die, that is your story. If you succeed, that is your story. Dragon’s Dogma is a true fantasy game in that insignificant peasants can become great heroes. Even Karl Denton, the disgruntled office worker on his lunch break. What a fantasy to have.

You keep your level and storage into New Game+, so eventually you get stupid OP. My friend can sprint from Cassy Village to Blue Moon Tower without running out of breath and consistently one-hits griffons. She also has so many clothes that she can style herself and her pawn freely. She earned that, and honestly, it makes the game a little funny.

Oh gosh, and you so didn’t get to the affinity system. Your interactions with all the characters except like the Duke are considered, and at the end, the story allows you to save your “Beloved”. It is always the ugly weapons seller or that rich guy’s daughter or a random guard. I laugh so hard every time Caxton moves in with me. EW! Especially when I play as an 11-year-old boy or something, LOL! The Arisen’s Bond lets you take it seriously, too, and get a cutie like Valmiro<33. The mystery of who it will be is very fun, though. Also, reading the reactions of people who HATE it is way fun.

The pawns are super funny and have a ton of back story. If you do Selene’s quests and generally listen around, you learn way too much about what they are. Most people in Gransys don’t know anything more about them than they are super annoying, lifeless strangers who steal and break things, which is so true. They also like to explain things and be “helpful”. Sometimes, they really do benefit me when realizing a door is now unlocked, but they are usually annoying. Duke Eddie won’t even allow pawns into his castle! He must have hated them as much as you, if not more. You make your own pawn, so you have an opportunity to make a cool team. You made a little couple, I’ve made two awkward middle school girls out to save the world, a grumpy middle-aged office worker with an annoying office guy pawn, my favorite .hack characters, and all kinds of super fun things! It is even better when you have PSN or XBOX Live enabled and other people can see, hire, and rate your pawns. Since it is an (often homely and awkward) character, not me, I even think poor ratings are funny. You get to use other people’s creations instead of generic Capcom hirelings, too. It’s inspiring and crazy sometimes. What a fun way to have subtle community interaction!

Essentially, Capcom used what features the console has and integrated them into the game in a fun way that encouraged community involvement, threw a perplexingly out-of-place but awesome JPOP song at the title screen that is generally loved, made a serious game with lots of subtle humor for us to appreciate (i.e., Cyclopes drop one to two eyes), and wrote the story in a way that incorporates what characters we make across PSN/XBOX Live so we are, in a way, always playing together. I will always love this wonderful game, regardless of having to change the picture size to read the text and Capcom’s gall to charge for Hard Mode as DLC.

(If you play again, play as a fighter. It is pretty easy, even on the first play-through. Just be sure to have a pocketful of rocks or Dragon’s Spit to hit apples or totems out of trees.)